


a falling embrace

by PurpleLex



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Drabble Collection, F/M, Kastle Valentine Week, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Post-Episode: s01e08 The Defenders, The Civil Wars in the Kastle Week, The Punisher speculation, The Punisher trailer
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-12
Updated: 2017-11-16
Packaged: 2019-01-16 08:39:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 40
Words: 58,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12339261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PurpleLex/pseuds/PurpleLex
Summary: Endless series of drabbles/one-shots from tumblr prompts + #CivilWarsintheKastle drabblesOrganized by chronological posting





	1. "Hey! I was gonna eat that!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Anonymous asked: Kastle 39 ]
> 
> 39 - "Hey! I was gonna eat that!"

 

It was all of 4 months before Karen found him again. She’s good, she sees the details and unintentional clues that no one else does, because unlike everyone else that writes about him she actually knows The Punisher. She knows  _Frank_. She’s able to follow the trail until she ends up on his metaphorical doorstep, sitting in a Chinese take-out joint on the corner of the block, gaze scouring up and down the street like a hawk.

He must crash somewhere in the vicinity; he has to. All common denominators point here.

Still, she’s sure that for all the hints she catalogued with extreme detail in her mind, she hasn’t gotten this far without Frank letting her. She can pursue all she wants, but he’s not as reckless as before. His actions are much more premeditated, careful. They’re only explosive and vocal if he wants them to be, but more often than not he’s discreet. News of a whole gang’s leaders riddled with holes in an alley is going to travel the criminal underground of the city with or without the media talking of another Punisher hit on the 6 o’clock news.

Point is, the clock strikes midnight while she’s in the small, dingy bathroom of the place, washing her hands with cold water for the sake of feeling refreshed, and Karen is acutely aware that she’s the weirdo customer that’s been sat in the same chair for 3 hours straight. Her one saving grace is that this place is run 24/7. There’s always the chance that he knows she’s close and won’t let her  _that_  close.  _She_  gave him the ultimatum. Usually the person in that position doesn’t get to reach out again.

She’s debating within herself how much longer she can camp out here hoping for a glimpse of Frank leaving from whichever building he’s inhabiting nearby, off to hunt down this night’s criminals, when she’s halted in her tracks by the sight of the man in question stretched out in her seat, absently eating the egg roll that had been left cold and untouched in its plastic container.

“Hey!” Karen says, indignant, can’t stop the word that is half-greeting and half-objection from shooting past her lips.

He doesn’t startle, or make any sudden movements. He was the one deliberately surprising her. No, he just waits a beat before moving his gaze from the street and to her, raising an eyebrow from underneath the black ball cap.

She has a dozen things she wants to say, a dozen emotions swirling within her at varying degrees, clawing for their way out. _‘Hi, Frank.’ ‘I don’t want you dead.’ ‘You look good with less bruises.’ ‘You’re not dead to me.’ ‘I’m sorry.’ ‘How are you doing?’ ‘I don’t hate you.’_ What makes it out, in a tone of forced irritation, is “I was gonna eat that.”

Frank’s gaze rolls away from her with a shrug and ghost of a smile, finishing off the last bite. He wipes his hand on a napkin and tosses it in the tray in one easy motion. “Didn’t miss much,” is all he says, looking back at her. The curious stare isn’t as light as the tone.

In one intense jolt, she feels longing. Funny, how they hadn’t known each other long before, not long at all, but he had a way of looking at her straight. Deep. And, hell, she’d missed it.

She resigns herself to sitting in the other chair, the one with its back to the door, and after a moment she folds her arms. He tilts his head. “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

He scoffs quiet, looking her up and down. Karen thinks she recognizes that look. He’s searching for something. She thinks she knows what that something is, too. “The Bulletin suits you,” Frank says before she can. “But the people you’re writing about…. Got that gun on you?”

She nods when his look gets piercing with the last question. “All the time.”

“ _Good_.”

Karen can’t help leaning forward, confused. “You’re not going to try talking me out of it?”

A smirk blooms, fast and quick, before it’s lost in his moving mouth. “Think I’m an idiot? No, I know that’s a battle I can’t win. Anyway, it’s….it’s you. Seeking out the truth, exposing all the bullshit in this city.”

“Someone’s got to do it.”

“Yeah, sure, but you love it. It’s in your blood.”

She grins, despite herself.

They must go a beat too long without her responding, or maybe Frank becomes aware that he hasn’t glanced away from her in a good 30 seconds, because now he’s doing just that, finger tapping something out on his knuckles.

This wasn’t what she expected. Confrontation, explanations, something hard and gruelling and that brought to the surface all the lonely  _feelings_  she’d been pushing down the past several months. Something that wasn’t goddamn casual chit-chat in a take-out restaurant awash with too much fluorescent light.

“Frank….” She catches his eyes almost instantaneously with the soft tone. “I’m glad you’re  _okay_.”

The words aren’t exactly bold, aren’t an explicit question of forgiveness, of friendship, of caring that she’d been coming here to throw his way.  _And yet…._

He looks away again, licks his lips, chuckles as he relaxes. “Sorry about the egg roll, but you really weren’t missing anything.”

Karen practically preens at everything unspoken in his behavior. “Yeah, well, probably wasn’t going to eat it after all.”

“No kidding.”


	2. "Looks like we’ll be trapped for a while…."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Anonymous asked: Kastle 17 ]
> 
> 17 - “Looks like we’ll be trapped for a while….”

They catch the dull shine of sweeping lights filtering through the curtains at the same time, the new presence interrupting their snooping.

Or, rather,  _Karen’s_  snooping. Frank is just along because he’s after some people connected to this conspiracy she’s looking into, and when she tells him flat out that she will be breaking into her suspect’s house tonight so please try to kill your targets at another location instead,  _well_.

Here he is.

They’re on either side of the front window, watching two cars of men park in the driveway. Frank’s already got his pistol out of his waistband and the slide racked back, but Karen grabs his arm. “Come on,” she hisses, pulling at him.

A hard look sets in. “Back door. Go now.”

“No!” She glances away a moment when some faint voices can be heard, car doors slamming shut. Karen huffs a quick breath. “Look, we’ll learn more listening to them; and I’m not leaving, no matter how much you try to make me, alright? So either you stay here and— and make a  _mess_  without knowing if they’re all guilty, or come with me!”

There isn’t much room for argument in her demanding stare, but Frank looks like he wants to, nonetheless. If it were any other time or situation she thinks she might even welcome the chance to verbally spar with him if he keeps looking at her that intensely. But, as it is, they only have a couple seconds to work with here to avoid this situation going to shit.

Feet pounding on the front steps makes him curse under his breath and then he’s the one grabbing her arm. It’s not gentle, but it’s not necessarily rough either as he calculates the best place for them to go. He picks the door at the back of the stairs — she would have too. He barely blinks at the water heater sitting inside before pulling her into the tight space with him.

It’s terribly cramped, but she doesn’t protest. She’s not in a position to right now.

Karen’s long since been in the habit of keeping a lamp on nearby at night or curtains cracked enough to allow the nuisance of street lights through. Complete darkness is dangerous, a reminder of nightmares that were all too real. And yet… this doesn’t bother her. Not as much as she’s feared. Not when adrenaline is pulsing through her veins and Frank still has a hand on her arm.

“Looks like we’ll be trapped for a while,” she murmurs, an attempt at injecting something light into this situation.

There’s the softest sound from him. It might have be a snort, or maybe a scoff, but she can’t see his face so she can’t be sure. It doesn’t matter. The front door is opening in the next second, a group of men walking in. Karen leans a shoulder against the doorjamb and focuses on listening.

They end up stuck in the excuse of a closet for half an hour, but it’s worth it. The corporate stooge she had been investigating reveals himself to be pretty chummy with what still exists of the Italian mob in Hell’s Kitchen, thanks to a family connection he must have hidden pretty deep. Now that she knows where to look, though, she will just have to dig deeper.

A twitch pings through Frank that she feels and senses in equal parts when two of the men talk briefly of the beatings they’ve had to inflict this week for late payments, including one against a kid. She understands; it makes her angry too. But Karen turns her hand and squeezes his arm, grounding him.

There’s a silent ‘ _wait_ ’ somewhere in the gesture as well. He will have the right chance to punish that asshole later.

His hand slides from her arm then, probably just now noticing he hadn’t let go in the first place, but Karen grabs his hand in hers before he’s completely gone. There is not a lot intimate in the gesture, she reasons. A couple fingers gripping each other — mostly hers gripping his, really — and not anything close to a palm against palm grip, or entwined fingers.

She just really does not want to feel like she’s standing entirely alone in this dark musty room, both of them so quiet she can barely hear even her own breath.

It’s an almost completely selfish action on her part, but Frank doesn’t pull away. Only brushes one of her fingers with his thumb, briefly. She reminds herself again that this  _isn’t_  all that intimate. Thinking that would be a stupid mistake, and there are more important things going on.

It isn’t until the mobsters have left and her target’s upstairs, television blaring, that they slip out. They don’t say a word to each other as they quietly make their way down around the block to where she’d parked her car. She is sure she will have a crick in her neck for a solid day thanks to the awkward height of the room and rubs at her neck after unlocking the driver’s side door.

She looks to where Frank stands a foot away, on lookout. Karen wonders if he’s already thinking about how he is going to kill those they overheard. That thought only makes her wonder when exactly this sort of thing stopped  _bothering_  her, but then she decides she doesn’t care all that much. “Want a ride?” She offers.

Karen expects him to decline, walk off alone into the shadows the same way he’d walked up on her here. But then he’s giving a slight nod and climbing in.

“Sorry,” she blurts out, barely five minutes later. Frank’s glancing at her on and off, she can feel it, but she doesn’t look back. “I didn’t mean to grab your hand, back there— I mean I did, it was just—”

“The tight quarters,” he supplies. “You’re not a big fan of them these days…Don’t worry about it.”

She bites her lip. “Yeah, something like that,” Karen says, a churning of relief and discomfort in her stomach. She lets the topic rest there. “Thanks.”

In her peripheral, she sees him nod and look back out the window. _This is Frank_ , she tells herself, hands gripping a bit more tightly at the wheel. She pretends like she can’t remember exactly how warm his hand was, or his thumb brushing over hers. She pretends like she wouldn’t have enjoyed a few more minutes trapped with him. Because that, all of that, is  _wrong_.

By the time she’s unlocked her apartment door and turns around to find him gone, she’s almost succeeded in believing herself.


	3. "Well this is awkward...."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Anonymous asked: Kastle 49 ]
> 
> 49 - “Well this is awkward….”

Karen’s not sure where the line exists in her life dividing up a Before and After. Her life has always been a hectic mess of problems, but that line must exist  _somewhere_ , because her life didn’t always involve moments like walking out of the shower to find two different uninvited vigilantes in her living room five seconds away from starting shit with each other.

They stop circling around the coffee table when Karen lets out a groan. She sets her gun down on the desk in the corner and, with a flush on her face, pulls her towel more tightly around her slender frame. “What the hell is this?!”

Matt tilts his head away, ashamed as he puts together all he needs to know about her appearance with his heightened senses. Frank looks away too, but she catches that twitching on his face. Whether the hidden smirk is from her appearance or her yelling, she doesn’t know.

“Karen, when did you get a gun?”

She sighs at Matt. “What are you doing here?”

“Yeah, altar boy, why  _are_  you here?” No, that smirk is definitely from her yelling at them. Or, more specifically, her yelling at Matt.

Karen rolls her eyes. She must be missing something if the relaxing and little bit smug posture of Frank compared to the tensing and irritated form of Matt is anything to go by. “…You weren’t answering your phone,” he finally replies. “And when I come by, he’s sitting in your living room!”

“So you thought something was wrong? Jesus, Matt—”

Frank gets a dark look on his face, then, but Matt’s talking desperately only to her. “Not like that,  _not like that_ , okay. But if he’s here then you’re working on something dangerous with him, or— or he’s protecting you again. Either way, you’re not safe.”

Karen licks her lips, looks away. “That’s a lot of dots to connect.”

“Am I wrong?”

She fixes her towel, again, before putting her hands on her hips. Frank turns away from them with a shake of his head and skulks into the small kitchen. He grabs a mug off the drying rack takes from her coffee pot without asking, but stays facing the wall with his back to them. Karen watches him settle into giving them some space before tearing her gaze away and addressing Matt. “Yes, we’re working on something together.”

“ _Karen_ —”

“I can take care of myself!” She cuts him off. “Okay, I’m not delusional, or stupid, I get it. But this is my choice….You trusted me with yours, remember? And I’ve respected that.” His jaw clenches, head shaking, ready to argue. “Now get out. Whatever else you wanted to talk about, I can’t do this right now.”

“Karen—”

“I mean it.  _Go_.”

Karen’s chest feels tight as she watches him strain for composure, for one last protest, and coming up empty. He climbs back out her window and disappears down the fire escape before she can think to remind him of the front door. Daredevil suit on or not, no one’s likely to see him take the stairs at this dead hour of night. She ends up shaking her head.

She hates this, hates when this happens. Her having to defend her choices whenever Foggy, or Ellison, or Matt take notice. At least Foggy and Ellison don’t go that one step further and try to control her. She gets why Matt tries, really, she does. But she doesn’t  _want_  it.

A calm silence settles into the apartment as she crosses to the window, taking care to lock them up again. Were they even locked in the first place? She can’t remember the last time she opened them, let alone that. Well, doesn’t matter, they will be secured now. A shiver runs down her spine as the hot flash of annoyance from earlier drains away, cool air registering goosebumps along her damp skin. She looks back. Frank hasn’t moved an inch.

She should go change, go wring out her hair and get dressed so she’s warm again. She should definitely change just so that she’s not standing by the likes of The Punisher, by Frank Castle, in nothing but a towel. But, instead, she crosses her arms and steps onto the kitchen tile.

“Well that was awkward….”

A beat passes. Frank turns around, hands leaned against the edge of the counter. His gaze isn’t complacent, never settling for long as a somewhat disturbed frown rests on his face. She’s not sure if it’s because of her attire or Matt’s presence.

She bites her lip. “This  _is_  awkward,” she corrects, softly, addressing the bigger elephant in the room. His eyes finally meet hers and stay. “Anyway, you two didn’t break anything, right? I don’t see anything so really it could’ve been worse.”

“I should—”

“I’m not upset about  _you_ , Frank,” she says firmly. “And you’re not one of the many problems standing between me and him, so save any advice or apologies you want to give out this time.”

“….You sure about that, Ma’am?”

Karen rolls her shoulders, ignores that. “Did you at least use the key I gave you or do I have to worry about you climbing through my windows too?”

His hand slides in his pocket a moment before extracting the spare. Frank sets it on the counter next to the cup she just notices he’d pulled out for her.

She used to keep the key hidden by the mailbox, on the off chance she would trap herself outside the door, but that unsafe habit stopped long ago. When she pressed it into his hand just a few days prior, he hadn’t wanted to take it, looking at her funny. But, she had insisted, and wouldn’t take it back.

Frank smiles wryly before gesturing with a tilt of his head. “That door needs better locks. Anyone with some decent willpower could bust through them no problem.”

“Point me in the right direction of where to find those and I’ll replace them,” she shrugs, smiling wide. “But  _you’ll_  have to do the install.”

She could just as easily hire a locksmith, and they both know it, but he nods without hesitation. Karen is aware that it will put his mind more at ease this way. And it gives another excuse for them to enjoy each other’s company outside of digging up information together on a common enemy, which she’s not about to ignore.

“You can make a new pot while I change; that one’s got to taste bad, it’s been there since noon. I’ll just take a minute,” Karen tells him, walking back to the bathroom. “And then we can talk.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” he says with a breath of a chuckle in his tone. She gets a strange, pleasing sort of feeling in her stomach when she sees how  _easily_  he settles into navigating her kitchen before she shuts the door.


	4. "Have I entered an alternate universe or did you really just crack a smile for me?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Anonymous asked: Kastle 40 ]
> 
> 40 - “Have I entered an alternate universe or did you really just crack a smile for me?”

“You look like you took a bat to the face,” Karen comments unceremoniously as she slides into the booth seat across from him.

Frank had his head tilted down just enough when she came in, shadows across his face making it hard to tell what were bruises and what weren’t. Now that she can see him clearly, she frowns. They’re all bruises.

A spot peeking out from cover on his neck catches her eye and she reaches out to move his jacket collar. Usually she stops herself from this sort of thing, and on the occasions that she doesn’t, he just shrugs her off. But she must have a certain look on her face or he must feel especially bad, because this time she ghosts her fingers over the exposed red line running jagged along the side of his neck and he lets her.

Karen cannot even begin to guess what caused this. It’s not a cut, but clearly it came close to bleeding open. “What did you do, catch yourself on a fence?”

A smirk tugs at his lips, hard and fast, before he turns his head and gestures for more coffee from the waitress. “You don’t have a high bar for my capabilities, Ma’am.”

She barely registers what he says, gaze fixed steadily on where that brief semblance of a smile was. It isn’t exactly the first time; Karen has seen Frank Castle smile several times in the past. In the hospital, in her car, in that other diner. He has a nice smile, she remembers well. It is one that stretches almost crookedly at the edges of his mouth and brings dimpled lines to his cheeks.

Yes, she’s seen Frank Castle smile, but now they’re 6 months into him fully embracing The Punisher, 6 months of every interaction kept near strictly and professionally related to her written exposés and his bloody corpses, 6 months of Karen putting herself in gradually more danger and Frank Castle littering himself with more bruises, so there’s a reason why the phrase ‘in the past’ gets added to the end of that sentence.

The waitress has come and gone, refilling his cup and bringing a new one for Karen, before she blurts out, “Have I entered an alternate universe or did you really just crack a smile for me?”

Frank catches her gaze with an incredulous one of his own. “And why’s that so strange to you?”

“I really have to say it?”

His expression is back to a neutral mask in an instant as he gulps some of the coffee down. Karen wraps her hands around her own cup, staring down at the sludge she doesn’t have much of an appetite for right now. For once, sleep sounds more appealing, despite the nightmares.

She hasn’t pushed him in all the time since she yelled that threat out to him in the woods. He appeared again on the rooftop, and dozens of times after when they were both following the same lead with albeit different methods. Karen tried to keep her relief and hope bottled up. If he wanted to see it or hear about it, she liked to think he would flat out tell her. Frank isn’t shy.

He pulls a folded set of papers out of his jacket, sets them down on the table between them. She doesn’t comment on the red stain at the bottom left corner. Frank tells her who they’re from, what they say — they’re connected to a corrupt official she’d been trying to expose for weeks. These records might just be the key she needs, and she didn’t even have to tell him where to look. Or to look at all.

Karen puts the papers in her purse without checking them. She fixes her eyes on him instead. “You like pizza?”

His gaze turns confused, but he humors her. “Not particularly, no.”

“Puerto Rican, then.”

“Can’t say I’ve tried it, but I can imagine.”

“I’ll take that as a maybe,” she says as she fishes out her notebook and a pen. Karen scrawls an address on a page before tearing it off. She pushes it across the table for him. “How’s tomorrow, nine o’clock?”

Frank is more than a little bewildered, and seeing that look on his face in this situation could almost make her laugh. However, she’s going for the firm approach here. “Whatever this is, I’ve got plans—”

“—hunting down bad guys, yeah, but with a face that purple I know there’s going to be some bruised ribs you’re not telling me about. You need a break. Just take a day,” she stresses.

“…And if I said no?”

She shrugs. “You might get a visit from Daredevil.” It’s a cheap threat. They have a begrudging friendly-hate relationship, now, and Matt’s not likely to jump at a command to try talking sense into Frank, anyway. Not when it’s something like this, a problem that Matt has too.

And yet, the threat prompts another smile from Frank. It feels like one of her biggest accomplishments as of late, and she’s been quite productive since joining The Bulletin. He nods at Karen slowly with some praise in his eyes.

“So. Nine?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”


	5. "Hey, I'm with you, okay? Always."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Anonymous asked: Kastle 14 ]
> 
> 14 “Hey, I’m with you, okay? Always.”

“You left another stain on the table,” she says as she leans over his shoulder, wrapping her arms loosely around his neck. “We’re going to have to buy a new one soon.”

“Hm?” Frank turns his head only a moment to press a light kiss to her arm in greeting. “Where?”

Karen points with her finger to the dark splatter of gun oil drops near the edge. It’s small, but it is hard not to miss given the rest of the table’s blemishes.

“That’s not mine,” he says as he continues cleaning the rifle laid out in pieces on the towel in front of him. “Remember, last night? You made hot cocoa and almost fell down tripping over the dog.”

Oh. Right. She’d thought she had cleaned up all the mess from that, but, then again, she had been in a hurry to clean up the floor first before the dog could lick up every inch of the chocolate he’s not supposed to have. “Hmph,” is all she replies.

Frank laughs quiet in the back of his throat.

She kisses his cheek, leaving him to his work as she goes to kick off her shoes and take a shower. It’s already been a long day for her since she’d had to finish tracking down two somewhat uncooperative witnesses before her article’s deadline. An article she had only just begun writing.

Karen is turning on the water when she hears the dog whining, no doubt pressing up against Frank’s leg for attention. He’ll stay like that, patient, as long as it takes until Frank is done and can give him a proper belly rub. She smiles to herself and steps into the shower.

They’ve been through a lot together. They’ve both had their own traumas, their own bruises. Found themselves in room after room smelling of gunpowder, blood, and plaster. But after Karen finally said enough to denying her feelings after yet another close call, grabbing Frank with both of her hands and kissing him soundly, the good days have been outnumbering the bad.

He hasn’t stopped killing criminals entirely — excluding that one night in the woods, she hasn’t ever asked him to — but their lives are remarkably different now. There’s room for entire nights spent at home, afternoon walks with the dog, mornings filled with lazy attempts at making breakfast and reading the paper.

It’s a life. It’s a home. And it’s for both of them.

She emerges a while later after blowing her hair dry and finds Frank suiting up. So he wasn’t just cleaning the guns for the sake of it tonight.

He watches Karen as she walks over, grabs his jacket for him along the way. He thanks her in a murmur that’s barely audible. She worries her lip between her teeth, absently, as he shrugs on the coat to complete what’s become the uniform of The Punisher. Usually by now he’s grabbing his bag and going, but he stops, eyes only on her.

When Frank raises a hand to cup her cheek, she leans into it. “I won’t be long, okay? You don’t have to wait up or worry.”

“Maybe I want to,” she smiles. It doesn’t feel as sweet on her face as she intends for it to be.

Karen is worried for him, she’s always worried, and she’s never been able to hide that. Not even in these moments when he’s hyper-attuned to it and feeling guilty about it, fumbling over the right words to say, to comfort with. She can read him well too, after all.

“Hey,” she whispers as he pulls her close, her hands fisted in the collar of his shirt. “I’m with you, okay? Always. You only have to come back in one piece.”

His stare is intense enough that Karen feels like she could melt if she stands under it long enough, but she barely gets the words out before he’s crushing his lips against hers. They’ve been here before with her saying some version of this a dozen times already. But it doesn’t make this moment mean any less as she holds onto him tightly with both hands until they’re out of breath, and time, and have to let go.

Frank doesn’t make verbal promises anymore, he can’t. She knows why. But this is a promise in its own way and it is more than good enough.


	6. "Don't you dare throw that snowba-, goddammit!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ random-fandom-ness asked: Omg I am such a sucker for fluff, so there's a chance I'll be sending you a few requests over the next couple of day if you don't mind. Could you do 11 for Kastle of your Drabble prompt thing? :) thanks ]
> 
> 11 - "Don't you dare throw that snowba-, goddammit!"

Karen Page isThe Best at building a snowman and she will passionately prove it to you if you ignorantly think otherwise. This is something that Frank learned through accident around three years into them actually being  _together_. It was around the holidays, and with neither of them feeling particularly in the spirit, they skipped the tree buying and presents wrapping mumbo jumbo entirely. 

Jumping in the car for four days, aimlessly driving far away from the tall buildings and endless lights. Their lives and respective professions were so wrapped up in the framework of the city that the bout of fresh air did them both good. That, and the quiet. They fell into this tradition as easily as they did all the rest — silently, and all at once.

Now, as Frank sits on the porch steps of their vacation cabin, he watches while Karen gives the same show-off lesson he’d had to their daughter. Well, this one has less showing off and more teaching involved, considering their daughter is only five years old, but it’s not lacking in any intensity.

Karen murmurs encouraging words he can’t fully hear as she carefully packs the base of the snowman’s form tighter. Their daughter, mirroring her mother’s concentration with her forehead scrunched up and little pink tongue peeking out the corner of her mouth, attempts to do the same. She ends up punching a hole in the thing instead. Karen’s nothing but patient, and fixes it.

Frank chuckles.

His eyes threaten to mist over, then, and he sniffs. He takes another sip of the rapidly cooling coffee in his hands as he blinks rapidly to push any potential tears away. Inevitably, the memories of doing this sort of thing with Maria, Lisa, and Frank Jr crop up in his mind. The images in his mind are just a bit worn with time but the feelings aren’t. Those are crystal clear. Once upon a time, he’d been overwhelmed by them, fighting them.

 _Not anymore_. He takes a moment now, smiling to himself as he thinks on those days. Fondly recalling the memories with a little less pain each time.

And then their daughter is shrieking in laughter and he looks up, finds her trying to pile more snow upon Karen’s legs where she must have tripped and fallen on her ass. Frank sets his cup aside on the step and stands.

“You’re in trouble, young lady, you got that? You made mommy’s legs get all wet,” Karen chastises with uncontained mirth in her voice as she stands up. She quickly tries to brush the rest off as much as she can before it melts anymore, clinging to her clothes.

Behind her, Frank bends to pick up a handful of snow.

Their daughter sees him, but he quickly raises a finger to point at Karen, and then makes a shushing motion. She understands and winks, exaggerating the effect with a tilting head.

_Daddy’s little girl._

Unfortunately, Karen notices, and turns around before he’s managed to finish compacting the snow. “Wha—” Her gaze flickers to his still moving hands. She narrows her eyes. “Oh, no.  _No, no, no_.”

“What?” He asks innocently. The smirking grin gives him away.

“Don’t you dare throw that snowba—” As soon as it’s shaped enough, he’s cocking back his arm and sending it sailing in one quick moment. It hits her chest dead center. “—goddammit!”

“Ooh, mommy said a bad word!”

“I’ve got an idea for her punishment,” Frank starts to say.

Their daughter’s already on his line of thought, though, throwing her arms up with a wide toothy grin. “ _Snowball fight!_ ”

They take off running for opposite ends of cover, Frank by a chair, their little girl behind the snowman. “No, no, no!” Karen tries to protest, but finally gives in when they both take aim at her, the only exposed target, and pummel her with snow. She gathers an armful of snow and quickly makes known her prowess with this activity, too.

The soaked jeans, red hands, and icy lungs they all get are one hundred percent  _worth it_.

By the time dusk falls, they and the muddy trails they tracked through the cabin are all cleaned up. Frank gets their daughter situated by the TV with her favorite show, curled up in her favorite blanket. She looks so precious that he has to stand there a moment until his heart stops feeling like it’s going to constrict hard enough to kill him.

He finds Karen in the kitchen, stirring a cup of cocoa. His arms slide around her waist easily and he rests his head on her shoulder. She sighs and leans into him. When Frank follows her gaze through the window, a rumble of laughter sounds at the back of his throat.

The snowman in the yard is still standing, but  _barely_. His head is off and smashed open on the ground. The rest of the body can be described, at best, as cracked and on the verge of crumbling apart.

Karen shakes her head. “It lasted five whole minutes.”

“You can rebuild tomorrow.” He presses a kiss behind her ear.

She hums. “Somehow, I get the feeling that’ll lead to more snowballs. You know that was her favorite part.”

“Would that be such a bad thing? She’s a fighter, that kid,” Frank says with overflowing pride.

He can see Karen’s mirroring grin reflected in the window pane.

The next day, the snowman is attempted once more. And once more, a snowball fight breaks out. That becomes a tradition for them, too.


	7. "Are you drunk?" + "Something about you makes me want to commit extreme violence."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ alwaysmyoriginalsin asked: How about 1 and 33 together for Kastle? Or 33 alone is fine too (super tempted by 50 too, oh god, I CANNOT CHOOSE) ]
> 
> 1 + 33 - "Are you drunk?" + "Something about you makes me want to commit extreme violence."

Her kitchen light illuminates a small space in the darkness of early morning. Karen keeps it on as a sort of night light against her occasionally recurring nightmares, but right now, squinting at it from her bedroom doorway, she loathes this choice. It is entirely too bright and only furthers the pounding of her headache.

She doesn’t notice the shadow in the corner of her living room until it moves to set something on her coffee table.

Karen’s not proud of the way she nearly falls over as she grapples for a hold of the door to slam in her intruder’s face, halfway through the motion before she realizes that the person is only Frank. “What the  _fuck_ ,” she protests, a hitch in her voice from wincing at her own shout.

“Sorry,” he says softly, glancing up with a frown as he leans to pick something else up from the table.

She spies her first aid kit there, then, along with the small black bag he had started keeping here for when her basic supplies don’t cut it. When he first showed up because it was the closest place, and she didn’t kick him out, he just started coming back. Sometimes every couple days, other times with week intervals.

Honestly, that first night, she was most surprised about him knowing  _where_  her new apartment is. Staying in one with patched up bullet holes didn’t exactly feel right. Funny that the guy that slams a door in her face is the same one still keeping tabs on her. She guesses they’re both bad at following through with letting go.

Karen only sighs at the familiar sight and moves forward. She stumbles over her own feet and has to grip the back of the couch to steady herself. She has never been great at navigating in the dark, especially not after drinking and dealing with a migraine.

“Are you drunk?”

She glares at him, a little annoyed at how he is able to ask that with gentle concern while he’s the one bleeding in her apartment. “No.” Karen finds the lamp by the couch and switches it on. The temporary blindness she brings on herself is worth it when she can blink it away a couple seconds later and see him more clearly. “I’m  _hungover_.”

“I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You didn’t.”

Karen moves the first aid supplies and sits on the coffee table across from where he is in the chair. She frowns at the wounds she can see littering his body. All surface scrapes or bruises, except for the bullet wound he is finishing stitching up along his shoulder. The fact that they’re mostly shallow doesn’t lessen her worried frustration. Neither does the amount of blood splattered over him that must have come from beating up others instead.

He glances up occasionally, watching her as she watches him. Trying to peer into her thoughts, no doubt.

When he’s done and sets the needle down, Karen grabs hold of his hand, and he lets her. She opens one of the antiseptic wipe packets and starts cleaning up his fingers, hand, arm. She’s methodical, careful like she’s done this before — because she has.

It gives her something to focus on other than what to say to fill the silence, and if she’s honest, whenever he shows up like this, she gets antsy if she  _doesn’t_  have a way to help. It brings her relief to be able to wipe the blood off him and return him to looking like normal. Normal Frank Castle, covered in only half-healed bruises and scratches, not in the blood of criminals.

She finishes up his other arm a couple minutes later, can feel his gaze on her the entire time as she opens another wipe packet and kneels between his legs. When her fingers go to the hem of his skull shirt that airs more on the side of tattered these days, he stops her.

Karen might appreciate the gesture if she didn’t have a migraine throbbing at the base of her skull and if they hadn’t been through this routine several times before. She gives him a tired glare. “I’ve seen your chest before, Frank.”

“You think I’m getting modest on you?” He asks, ghost of a smile on his face.

She doesn’t have anything to say that wouldn’t be completely inappropriate, so she ignores him, bites her lip, and gently pulls his shirt up over his head. He helps her. When she glances down and spies the blackened bruises across his ribs, she groans. “Are you kidding me?”

“Ma’am—” He sighs, the one exasperated now.

Karen starts wiping at the blood on his shoulders, collarbone, work her way across his pecs. He has a nice chest and she would like to be able to fully appreciate it just  _once_  without terribly worrisome injuries blocking the view. “Do you ever think about stopping by for a social visit, Frank?  _Hm_? Skip the blood clean up and just come over for the coffee. That wouldn’t be the hardest thing.”

On the third wipe, she reaches his ribs, and can’t help jabbing in some of the darker spots. He sucks in a breath each time she does but says nothing. If he could breathe fine before, hauling himself through her window and sitting in her chair without really making a peep, then she doesn’t think that a little jabbing will be life-threatening. It’s just therapeutic.

“Hell, you could use the door and knock.  _‘Hey, Karen, do you have any coffee?’_ And I could say ‘ _Yes, Frank, I do, why don’t you come in and I can share my leads without worrying about what part you need stitched up first’._ But no,” she sighs heavily, pointedly, flickering up to look at him a moment as she finishes cleaning up the blood dried on his stomach.

“ _Ma’am_ —”

“Right, sorry, my impression wasn’t accurate enough.”

“ _Karen_.” He grabs her wrist, again, but there isn’t room for her to budge in his grip this time and it makes her still in her motions. It’s fine, she was done anyway. Frank is breathing a bit more audibly now — because she was exacerbating his injuries or from frustration, she doesn’t know, but her suspecting the latter is part of the reason she does not look up right away.

That, and him  _finally_  saying her name.

She shouldn’t have mocked him about that just then but she’s tired, and this migraine is only getting worse from the lights, and there’s a tight ball of stress inside her heart making it thump faster because this is the fourth time this week he has come by her apartment to get patched up, and she may want to see him more, but not like  _this_.

Not always hurt and bloody and quiet. Not always more emulating The Punisher than Frank Castle.

When his thumb rubs soft, soothing circles along her pulse point, she meets his stare. “Sorry,” she says this time. “Something about you makes me want to commit extreme violence.”

Frank huffs what could be a dry chuckle on a better day. “I deserve that.”

“No, you don’t.” His eyebrows raise, furrowed together. She would almost say the look is fond. But this is Frank — which doesn’t rule that out, it just makes the situation infinitely more complicated. “….Okay, maybe you do,  _sometimes_.”

They share a smile.

He lets go of her wrist and she immediately misses the contact, but then he’s leaning close, past her. She takes a deep breath. He smells like gunpowder, but the copper tang of blood is lost in the antiseptic until they both nearly cancel each other out, and underneath that is something like chalky soap. It’s nothing special, but she finds herself filing it in a memory to call upon, later.

When he leans back, he has a bottle and he’s putting it in her hands.  _Aspirin_. “I’ll make coffee.”

Karen looks at him wryly, but sits back up on the coffee table so he can stand and go to the kitchen. He’s a conundrum — both selfish and selfless, hard edges and soft touches — but perhaps what is even more of a conundrum is that she understands him perfectly.

Perfectly enough to know when she can press and let out her frustrations, because she knows, deep down, that he’ll find a way to make her feel better. Sometimes meaning to, sometimes not. That part is hard to read. But they got past the bullshit of stepping away to keep her safe a while ago.

She waits to take the pills until he comes back with two mugs of coffee, passing one to her. When he sits back down, their knees bump, but neither really leans back to correct that, so they stay touching. “My file’s by the door—” she begins, ready to give him the rundown on the criminals she’s using as sources right now so that he can avoid going after them. For the moment.

Frank shakes his head. “I owe you a coffee visit.” He isn’t fazed by the way her lips part, mouth hanging open slightly. He doesn’t do  _just_  coffee visits, and him even saying that sounds strange, but he only nods at her. “How’s the lawyer; Nelson? Still skittish and spouting Grade A bullshit?”

That startles a laugh from her. “Foggy’s not skittish — if  _you’re_  not in the room.”

She intends to give him a brief rundown of their meeting at the bar earlier when she got absolutely hammered, but the story runs a little longer than usual. Frank smiling near the whole time doesn’t exactly prompt her to  _stop_  talking.

He stays true to his word and they talk about everything but their business together. It’s…nice.  Really nice.

She only regrets poking his ribs a  _little_  bit.


	8. "Why does anyone have to be naked?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ prompted by alwaysmyoriginalsin ]
> 
> 50 - "Why does anyone have to be naked?"

“Couldn’t sleep,” she says when the door creaks open and she sees Frank stepping through.

“There’s a lot of that going around.” He glances at the rest of the room. It’s nothing special, harboring a small unheated pool with a couple plastic chairs, complete with the generic white and blue palette.

She pats the space next to her from where she sits at the edge, legs submerged. “The water’s nice.”

He looks bemused and conflicted for a few moments before kneeling. If it took her a second to realize he had to do so to take off his boots, well — she won’t tell  _him_ that. She isn’t drunk, she just isn’t completely sober, either.

Frank rolls his pant legs up to his upper shins, as far as they will go. She isn’t surprised; Karen remembers how his body is practically made of solid muscle after he laid on top of her to protect her all those months ago, and then the lesser times he had been there to help her out in dire moments since.

She has to remind herself to look away and stop staring when he joins her at the ledge, head tilting subtly her direction. “Do you want the whiskey or vodka?”

“Never had a taste for vodka,” he shares as he takes the brown mini-bar bottle from her hand. His fingers are calloused, but smooth, and his hands don’t have as many scrapes on them as usual since she’s been monopolizing his time the past three nights running down leads.

They sit in in silence for a long while, separately drinking and enjoying the peaceful pool. Karen watches the lights from underneath the water paint flashing lines across the dim walls. One of her feet brushes against his, accidentally, but she doesn’t murmur an apology. It’s comforting to be so near him.

She leans over and dips a hand in the water, trailing her fingers across the surface to create soft ripples. Maybe her head is feeling a little more fuzzy than it should, or her inhibitions are lowered just enough from the combination of alcohol and Frank, but when the idea to swim comes to her mind, she doesn’t think long about its cons.

Pulling her dripping legs out carefully and standing, he doesn’t ask what she’s doing when she walks away. Not until she is standing at the edge of the deep end, pushing off her shorts and underwear from underneath the baggy tank top she’s using a sleepwear.

“Ma’am, you can’t swim here  _naked_.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a public pool,” he says, almost fumbling.

“Exactly. I’m allowed to swim.” It sounds reasonable to her. His pressed lips and reddening neck only strike her as silly as she moves the already shed clothing across the ground behind her so they don’t get splashed on.

He curses something under his breath and looks away in time to miss the show when she grabs the hem of her top, pulling it up over her head. “ _Swimming_ , alright. Why are you getting naked?”

“Why does anyone have to be naked? Limited clothing options,” she says, nose wrinkling at the very thought of having to wear chlorine smelling underwear tomorrow. Plus, if she did that, then she would have to swim in this top, considering she was already devoid of a bra right now. Skinny dipping was really the simplest option.

He begins to say something else, but she’s already taking two steps and then doing a little skip off the edge. The water rushes around her entire being in the next second. It’s glorious and exhilarating. She forgot how amazing this sensation felt — a shower is a poor imitation, at best.

She lets herself sink slightly, the water doing wonders for helping her refocus.

Karen is currently naked, in a pool, with Frank Castle in the room. She doesn’t know whether to laugh or feel embarrassed, a tugging low in her stomach giving her another thought altogether. She ignores that urge, too.

When she emerges, wiping at the hair stuck to her face and blinking away the stinging chemicals from her eyes, there is a brief moment where she can’t see him. He’s not at the edge, or anywhere else around the pool. Regret and disappointment starts to hit her, thinking she practically scared him off with her behavior — but there’s a scraping sound and she squints at the alcove where the door is, finds him leaning a chair up against the door.

He doesn’t look happy with its makeshift locking abilities as he adjusts it a couple times, but then he resigns himself to it and turns around. There’s something  _cute_ about him worried about others walking in. Ever a gentleman, his eyes stay above the water and on her face, too.

She grins and relaxes.

“Worried the receptionist will find me skinny dipping?”

“Something like that.” He slowly makes his way back, sits down at the edge.

“You could join me.” There’s a long moment of a stare where neither react, neither shrinking under the other’s eyes as Karen realizes how her words could sound. She licks her lips. “When’s the next time you’ll have the chance to cross _‘acting crazy and skinny dipping’_ off your bucket list?”

“You know, you’re making a lot of assumptions about me, ma’am.”

“So you  _have_  done it before?”

“Didn’t say that,” Frank says, grinning small then, and she knows he is messing with her.

“Didn’t think so,” she counters back. When he doesn’t budge on her proposal, doesn’t even move his feet in the water, she dips her head back to rewet her hair and then swims to the edge he’s sitting at.

Closer up, his unreadable expression is more intense. She wants to know exactly what debate he’s having in his head, but doesn’t ask. Karen puts her forearms on the edge next to him and lays her head down sideways on them. Her legs barely kick in the water.

“I can’t remember the last time I swam. I think it was years ago. You?”

He looks pensive a moment, then shakes his head. “Nah, it’s been a while….What about you, you part of one of those high school teams?” He asks suddenly, peering at her.

She laughs. “No; I didn’t have the fish gene. And I never learned how to swim overhand properly so that would’ve been a  _disaster_.” He smirks as she shrugs. “But, I did boast the ability to sink to the bottom and hold my breath a longer than anyone else I knew.”

“Yeah? That could come in handy.” Frank almost sounds impressed.

She almost makes an off-hand comment about how it did when a prison guard tried to choke her out in her cell, but she just barely manages to keep that in, lips pressed tight. That would only turn the conversation to a dark place, remind him of the real world beyond this room. She hums a moment instead. “Guess.”

“What?”

“I was on a sports team in high school,” she shares. “Guess what it was.”

He clearly thinks the request is ridiculous, but at her patient look, Frank rolls his lips and furrows his brows. When his eyes flicker to her legs in the water for a brief second, she hopes her cheeks don’t turn pink. They feel like they’re flushing. “You were one of those running track.”

Turning her face into her arm, she laughs. “That obvious?” She shakes her head. “Okay, what about you? I can’t picture you big on swimming. Or running. Or football.”

He grins small. “No, ma’am, I was not.”

“So? What’d you do? Everyone does something.”

“Well, now, if we’re going back to  _middle school_ ….”

Karen giggles again and they share a smile.

They talk little things, but mostly nothing, until she notices her toes are starting to get pruned and goosebumps raise up on her skin from the water turning cold. She shivers for the fifth time, about to get out, when he gets up. There’s a towel cabinet in the corner that, admittedly, she didn’t notice before.

He grabs one for her and she murmurs a thanks when he walks back over. She expects him to set it down and turn around, but he doesn’t, stretching it out in his hands for her instead. His head is still turned, though, as expected.

She bites her lip as she climbs out and steps up to take it from him. Frank helps her, first, until his fingers brush her skin, and then he’s turning completely away. Tucking the towel securely around herself, she walks over to pick up her clothes. She tells herself not to take him repelling from her all that personally.

The air conditioner is running in the main building when they walk back through to the elevator and it makes her feel like an icicle all of a sudden. The wall clock they pass by blinks out 1:37AM.

When the elevator dings and they step in, a thought strikes her and she side-eyes him. “You played baseball, didn’t you?”

Frank pauses, finger pressed on the button for their floor, and then chuckles. His gaze is full of wonder. “Shortstop and hitter.”

“I’ll pretend like I know what those terms mean.”

He chuckles, again, and she decides she wants to hear it more often. She doesn’t notice she hasn’t looked away, feeling pleased with herself, until he’s lifting a hand and tucking a stray strand of damp hair behind her ear.

It takes her breath away instantly.

He must notice, dropping his hand instead of lingering. But she doesn’t want that.

Karen leans forward, throws all her cautious thoughts to the wind, and kisses him. His lips are soft. She doesn’t know  _why_ she ever thought they would anything different. He doesn’t pull away, not right away, so she rests her free hand on his shoulder and closes the rest of the gap between them with a step.

His hands rest gently on her waist, so gentle she could cry, and then one is pressing more firmly against her hips, the other traveling up to cup her cheek. Frank is warm,  _radiating_ heat. She almost feels like she could burn, and that only makes her fingers curl around his shoulder, her teeth catching his bottom lip.

The kiss deepens as his fingers run through her hair, holding her head close. Her heart races faster when his fingers lightly press against a sensitive spot at the base of her skull. Whiskey and coffee is on his tongue and she savors the taste of him. She wants him, wants all of him, barely able to breathe but intoxicated and pressing closer.

The elevator dings open, startles them both. Karen leans her forehead against his, chasing his touch. Frank glances to the hall past them, sees its empty, and then presses a soft kiss to her temple, her cheek, the corner of her mouth. She feels elated when he doesn’t step back.

“We can’t,” he still says. His voice is low, gruff, and completely wrecked. “ _I can’t_.”

There’s nothing she wants to do more than protest, to argue, to hold him until he lets go of his fears. But she can’t make his decisions for him, just like he can’t maker hers for her. She nods against him. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

He says nothing, simply dips his head a bit to the side, and she presses a kiss to his cheek before disentangling. Makes the choice easier for him.

Frank needs time, and she can’t be mad or hurt about that when she understands exactly why. She’ll just wait.


	9. KastleValentine drabble

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ KastleValentine prompt ]
> 
> post with graphic - shipsabound.tumblr.com/post/157238836286/

_I missed you._

It takes Karen approximately five weeks to say it.

Those simple words aren’t the first to come to her mind when he knocks so innocently on her door months after she last sees him from afar on a rooftop. She says almost everything else to him first, eventually, with each new encounter. The logical questions, and the ones more rooted in emotions. The comments born of anger, hope, sadness. But not  _that one_.

It initially occurs to her when Frank leaves her apartment that first night he’d shown back up. It’s closer to three in the morning than two, and she’s exhausted. She’s noticed him talking faster in the past half hour, curtailing the expansive details of his information that she’s not able to fully digest right now, like he just  _knows_.

He leaves her with a slip of paper with a location and time written haphazardly across it and deposits his mug in the sink before he leaves. She thinks it, then, watching him. It slips out with a sigh that’s not at all coherent enough to carry the words properly. The door closes without hesitation.

She finally texts it, once. It’s a late night of too much rain, too many dead-ends, and too much resulting alcohol. Still soaked from the storms but half a bottle of whiskey in, she finds herself with a mind just careless enough to act stupidly. Naturally, she picks the _worst_ idea to come to mind, the want to unburden stronger than anything else.

A failure to send message pops up. It takes nearly ten minutes to work up the courage to resend it, only to receive the same error in less than a second. He’s changed burner phones again. She laughs. 

When he climbs into her car the next day, nonchalant behavior clashing hard with the bruises and cuts wrapping around his knuckles, she laughs then, too. It’s a stupid thing to say. It doesn’t  _need_ to be said. With what they’re doing, constantly trading information, constantly covering each other’s back despite how the law puts them firmly on the wrong side of the line for doing so, it’s not exactly important.

Except, for some reason _, it is_. To her.

It happens approximately five weeks after they resume their messed up semblance of a partial partnership, and the whole situation starts having absolutely  _nothing_  to do with him. A stalker following her more critical articles shows up at the Bulletin on fucking Valentine’s Day.

A part of her feels the need to point out the irony that the stalker just wanting to kill her shows up on the romantic holiday, but that’s a damn stupid idea considering how he’s brandishing a gun. When Karen tricks him later in an elevator and hits him probably eight more times than is necessary with the butt of that gun, all she can think about is how  _tired_ she’s becoming of finding guns in her face, delusional eyes alight behind the trigger.

Giving the cops her statement several times over doesn’t allow her to go home until dusk is settled on the horizon, but the surprise of the man standing by the hallway window possessing the fire-escape is enough to awaken her numb bones. The text about calling the cops to the lobby shines brightly from the burner he’s kept just a few days too long to be routine. Her brow furrows.

“Not for me?” Frank asks, tone more monotonous than the cloud in his eyes suggests it should be.

“Sorry, no. I was- I was in a rush, and I guess I just…really missed  _you_.” It slips past the filter she’s too worn out and now too  _comfortable_ to keep up. She shakes her head, chastising her stupidity under her breath before cautiously meeting his eyes. They barely lock gazes before she finds herself crushed against his chest.

She almost wants to ask if he knows what she means,  _really knows_ , or if he thinks she’s just talking about this situation. But she doesn’t need to ask about how worried he must’ve been from the random text of danger. His arms wrap around her tighter, less of a hug and more of a desperate hold, a breath away from crushing her lungs. She just exhales and returns the hold as best she can with her chin on his shoulder. Whatever he thinks she meant, it’s  _more_  than close enough.

If his jacket gets dotted with a couple drops of tears that night, they don’t talk about it, just like they don’t talk about the hug at all, just like they don’t talk about how Frank starts keeping one of his two burner phones permanently. Things like this are sometimes better left not clarified.


	10. #CivilWarsintheKastle - dust to dust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ #CivilWarsintheKastle: day 2 - dust to dust ]

 

 _The first time–_  

Pitch black, it’s too dark to see his eyes. The little of what light is left in her apartment at this late hour, filtering up from the street lamps, is remarkably dimmed in her gaze thanks to the blinding of the laptop screen sitting on her lap. But that doesn’t keep her from identifying how his shoulders still when she offers him the couch for the night.

Karen’s fairly certain, too, that he’s looking at her with that squinting deciphering that’s just so  _Frank_.

The lead she passed on to him would keep him in the neighborhood through tomorrow; staying here just made sense. It was efficient. She points out as much, forces him to acknowledge it.

A pause sits agonizingly long between them before he gruffly accepts. She wants to grin, relief all too consuming for a second – relief knowing that at least tonight he’s forced to  _moderately_ take care of himself, no matter how inconsequential that is considering his life choices. She wants to show that, but ultimately her lips press together in a line as she nods.

She resumes her research, pretending the acceptance should be as expected as it is that he’ll be punching someone tomorrow.

The apartment feels heavier, filled with an undefinable energy that thrums along to an awkward beat, and while he doesn’t stir an inch when she finishes up and climbs into her own bed, she’s not so sure he’s asleep. If he is, then he sleeps like the dead. The thought triggers a flinch that no one sees.

The clock glows out 4:50AM when she hears him leave. It takes her a few minutes to identify the rustling until the tell-tale creaking of the window by the fire escape alerts her. He mutters something under his breath at that, no doubt cursing the damned thing just as she does. Karen lets herself roll over and blink at the glass panes after he leaves.

* * *

_Step two–_

Threatening to turn the color of a Cabernet Sauvignon, the stopped sink makes her pause and stare. Questions about _how long_ fly through her mind – how long he chased down criminals tonight, how long he tore up his knuckles on someone’s bones, how long he went without properly cleaning his wounds in order to make his blood this dark, this dried.

She just sighs.

Frank slips the towel from her fingers to wipe where he stitched up a graze on his arm. She’d insisted on rinsing it after cleaning up a cut on his back where he couldn’t reach, and she’d intended to chastise him as she did it – but those thoughts got lost as she stared at the freakishly opaque water. Now all that’s on her mind is how he can manage to be gentle enough that she didn’t feel his fingers a moment ago, how he can be gentle all the while looking like  _this_.

She closes up the First Aid kit he’d taken some bandages from and makes an excuse about putting on coffee. At somewhere around six cups, she doesn’t need any more of it, really, but she’s lacking any other reason to leave the bathroom that won’t put him on edge, worrying about being around her too long. They’ve already done this dance several times – he’s not fully comfortable staying, and she’s not fully comfortable with him leaving.

Stuck in a state of limbo, they fumble.

Karen fetches the only extra blanket she has, a plain cream quilt kept around for the winters, and presses it into his chest when they’re done talking half an hour later and he’s started glancing to the door. It startles him just enough that he instinctively takes it, protests dying on his lips not long after when she flips the light switch and throws out a comment about buying breakfast. 

After all, she does owe him at least one proper meal for all the stake-out coffees he’s bought her. It doesn’t have to be anything more than that.

He leaves when it’s still dark out, but she’s too bleary-eyed to do more than burrow further under the covers at the noise. The image of him stretched out like a log on her couch, blanket awkwardly thrown over his feet, stays tucked behind her eyelids for days, and she doesn’t manage to buy him that meal until three weeks later.

* * *

_Tender reach–_

Yellow and purple splotches of abuse paint the canvas of his face, but she hardly notices. Becoming used to that should be worrying. Karen supposes she could always blame Matt hiding his nighttime activities for the detachment, but that’s not true either, memories of Kevin’s troubles barely blurred from time, always sitting just a flicker of a thought away.

The walls start to crumble one day, inexplicably, as Frank stops resisting resting his eyes for a quick second, or taking a brief nap in her presence – in her  _space_. He stops having to be invited on another day, and at some point after that, the window’s creak becomes a muted hum. It’s still there every time she opens the sticky thing herself, squeaking a loud cry for oil, she just stops hearing it when Frank’s the one moving it.

It’s barely 6AM, but Frank’s sprawled on the couch more comfortably than she’s ever seen, arm tucked underneath his head. She wonders if she should buy him his own pillow. That would probably rattle him, she thinks as she sits on the coffee table.

He doesn’t stir.

Not when she shuffles over, not when she settles near, not when she traces his brows. It’s rare to see him when he’s this relaxed. It’s rare for him to be this out of it, period. The bruises are less today, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Karen traces the line of his broken nose twice before withdrawing, flush of shame itching a path up her spine.

He would get rattled at her doing this, too – she’d bet a hundred dollars on it. And she doesn’t want him to leave, doesn’t want to watch him go back to sleeping God knows where, coffee cup perpetually in hand out of necessity when she does see him, hooded eyes unable to completely wash out the bloodshot streaks.

Works calls for her before he wakes. It’s the first time she’s been the one to leave him, to leave like this, and it’s a new feeling that sits tucked against her chest without a name.

* * *

_Blurring lines–_

Cast in the blue light of her lamp, she wants to know how he can sleep so deeply. And that’s what he’s doing – sleeping. Not resting, napping, catching a few minutes of shut-eye. Frank doesn’t sleep like the dead, she sees now. No, he sleeps like someone stuck in a  _coma_ , recharging their batteries from a deficit that’s grown far in the negative.

The trust is implicitly there, a flashing neon sign that clenches at her veins. They’re still in a limbo, perhaps they always will be in an odd sort of way, but the space is more defined. The fog dissipates.

Karen finishes updating her notes, closes the lid, and stands to shake him awake. The man’s got enough looming health problems as it is – a sore back from sleeping upright wouldn’t be a good one to pile on if it can be helped. It takes a minute, gaze fleetingly focused after a burst of adrenaline where he looks for the danger that, for the time being, isn’t anywhere nearby.

There’s no real surprise from him when she offers the bed – after all, she’ll take the couch. The sore rib he’s been nursing for a week could do with a night on a fully flat and cushioned surface that wasn’t a solid six inches shorter than he needs. They’ve already done this before. 

The mutters are nearly unintelligible, but the fingers that grip her wrist are firm. He shakes his head.

The last thing she expects after he stands is for him to actually take her up on the offer, collapsing on top of her sheets with the heavy jacket still very much on, boots thankfully kicked off a while ago in the corner by the door. She’s stuck between the urge to ask  _why_ he bothered trying to decline, and the urge to get the spare blanket that’s now more his than hers.

Frank turns on his side, back to the rest of the bed, eyes closed to the window. She shifts on her feet, unsure. A minute passes.

He reaches a hand behind him to push her pillow further away from him, to the other side, and lets out a heavy breath as he balances seemingly on the edge of the mattress. The tell-tale signs of him slumbering into another coma are apparent by the time Karen crawls under the covers on the opposite side.

The thought strikes her, a split second before she falls into the dreamless abyss, that she can’t recall the last time she was haunted by a nightmare.

* * *

_Too close–_

At some point, it becomes routine. He’s just there, sharing the space, staying the night to recover at least once a week. There’s a rhythm to her life in this way that hasn’t existed for a while, the tether to darkness that is Frank Castle keeping her more groundedthan she’s sure anyone would believe if she confessed to this aloud.

It’s always  _hypnotic_ , the way his face softens in his sleep, such a stark contrast from the harsh lines that present themselves the rest of the day. She can’t help tracing his features sometimes, struck by that dichotomy of him, but she stops worrying about how he’ll react when his lips tug in the faintest semblance of a smile one night as her thumb brushes his cheek.

She knows he’s not sleeping now, knows his tells. He blinks behind closed eyelids but doesn’t open them, doesn’t turn away, doesn’t say to stop. Tucking her hand under her head, her own eyes slip closed across from his. Either of them acknowledging they’re doing anything more than sharing a twisted sort of camaraderie is too much. 

For however long it lasts, everything’s just fine as it is.


	11. #CivilWarsintheKastle - the one that got away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ #CivilWarsintheKastle: day 3 - the one that got away ]

 

There’s a dot of crimson on the curve of her forearm, leaving the echoes of a line behind where it trailed down from her palm. The gash wasn’t deep; Frank had stitched it up for her more carefully than he’s ever focused on any of his own. Bottom lip worried between her teeth, she’d said nothing about the ambush she’d just been through. The lives he’d just taken.

A source meet gone wrong – he was lucky to have found the poor sap’s tortured remains strung up when he did.  _He_ was lucky, because by the time he’d changed course and found her, Karen had already wrestled a gun from one of the assholes. Ponytail tugged askew, she was thrown to the ground but the metal was steady in her grip, wide-eyes fired up with determination. He pulled the trigger on them himself before she even knew he was there.

She could take care of herself, no doubt, but she didn’t need more blood on her hands. And he didn’t mind adding these scumbags onto his.

She’d said nothing since they walked through the door, and he didn’t ask, but by the time he emerged from patching up the rest of the minor wounds he’d collected himself, she was perched on the grate of the fire escape with a beer dripping condensation next to her thigh.

Karen Page didn’t need someone like him around in her times of trouble –  he’s the one that usually made them worse. If not worse, well, then not necessarily  _better_. Death was always death, circumstances be damned, and she’d witnessed too much of it around him. He brought too much of it into her life.

Frank steps through the window, but when she scoots over to make more room and he sees the way her knuckles are pressed white, the duffel bag in his hand slips back down to the floor inside. He slowly settles next to her, legs hanging over instead of tucked underneath like hers. She passes the beer.

“You’re shaking.”

She ducks her head, staring at her hands like they’ve betrayed her. “They started after I sat out here,” she confesses, a shrug jerking her shoulders more like a shudder before she tips her head back. “I don’t know why. I’m not– I’m  _not scared_. Maybe it’s adrenaline? Stress?” She laughs, but it’s weak.

The glass in his hand has already turned warm from the residual summer heat, but he doesn’t care. He won’t be drinking it tonight.

He watches her twitching – worrying her lip, tapping her fingers, eyes darting as they peer into the darkness occasionally like she’s hunting for monsters in the shadows. Relaxing into a lean tilted his way, she subtly encroaches on his space as if he’s not just another monster normally stalking in those same shadows. 

Part of him wants to shift away. The greater part of him keeps him where he is.

“Maybe it’s all three,” he offers softly. She can say she’s not afraid, but he’s not so sure he believes that, remembering the tremor in her voice when he’d helped her up with bruised hands and asked if she was alright. Karen smiles.

“Yeah. Maybe.” She takes more than a sip from her own beer, almost done with it already.

Frank looks away. “Ma'am, you should get some rest. I should go–”

“ _Wait_. Please.”

He can’t help the way his eyes snap to her face at the plea, regrets it when he sees her, really  _sees_ how she’s coping this particular night. There’s loneliness bleeding in the water gathering at the bottoms of her eyes and vulnerability radiating so intensely it makes him swallow. Her soul’s laid bare, and he has a hard time remembering if she’s ever tried to hide it from him to begin with. Sometimes he wishes she would.

“I know you’ve got better things to do,” she says, and he wishes she wouldn’t do that, wouldn’t self-deprecate as if she isn’t someone  _worthy_ , as if he’s someone that  _is_ , “but… just ten minutes. Okay? I don’t want to be alone, and I don’t want to have to explain this to anyone else. At least, not right now.”

She’s trying to manage a smile in the way she does that could be condescending if Frank didn’t know that she’s as much attempting to reassure herself as she is he that she’s perfectly fine. She’s trying, but they both know it’s bullshit.

Red should be the one here – the one looking out for her, the one she gets the need to sit next to at midnight after going through some traumatizing shit. Red should know these sides of her by now, should’ve seen it plain as day like he had.

Karen’s eyes start to flutter away, like she’s expecting a rejection. He should do that, again. Should’ve walked away for good by now.  _But he can’t_. Clearing his throat, he nods, and settles back against the window frame.

With a sigh, she tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear, and mirrors him as she presses her own head back against the frame. She finishes her beer in another gulp. The background noises of New York City breathing around them fill the space as he blinks up at the flat black sky, thinks of all the new avenues of violence he has to chase down thanks to the IDs he pulled off those assholes earlier, the itch under his skin for the job of the Punisher only momentarily sated.

He doesn’t notice the dot of blood dried on her arm until he hears her head sliding along the wood as she slips into sleep. She’s slumping his way, slowly, until suddenly she’s resting against his shoulder, blonde tresses fanning out across his jacket. There’s the distinct possibility his heart stops for a moment out of sheer  _shock_. He curses under his breath.

This is why Red should be here. Hell, even Nelson would be better than him – than the Punisher, someone that’s taken probably about as many lives in this past year as she’s protected. She’d spin it another way – she has, before, when they’ve talked about this, talked about the strange partnership they keep persisting with despite how wrong it is – but that’s not how a normal person should think.

And Karen Page deserves more of normalcy than whatever this life is.

His finger twitches as he stares at the red drop, can’t get over how  _wrong_ it is, until he relents, swiping some of the condensation off his own beer’s side in order to rub away the blood stain. She stirs at the touch. 

Frank waits for her to wake, but she doesn’t.

She’s out cold, limp body tipping forward inch by inch off his shoulder. If he left her alone, she’d likely wrench herself awake from the sensation of falling, but he reaches his hand back to steady her. Her pulse thrums underneath his skin, a steady beat. It’s almost  _soothing_.

He hates it, but he hates more how he doesn’t really hate it at all.

Frank slips his hand off her neck and stares back up at the sky, hating himself most of all for being just as selfish as Red. It was hard to really walk away.


	12. Five Times Frank Jokes (and One Time Karen Returns It)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ madsmkkelsen asked: Fic prompt: Might be a little OOC, but maybe once Frank got more comfortable with Karen, he'd tell some dad jokes to her once in a while. Surprisingly, she genuinely finds it funny Thanks! ]

The first time humor springs forth from him is entirely accidental. At least, she thinks it is. It’s hard to tell because it happens so suddenly, her in one second handing the menu back to the waitress and in the next taking hold of her mug as Frank mutters, “Waffles are just pancakes with abs.” 

She snorts. Quickly, Karen’s eyes snap to his, torn between shock and rebuttal. He’s got a twinkle hidden deep underneath dark depths. “Do you hold a grudge against waffles?”  
  
He shrugs, hands folding and unfolding.   
  
“You do.”  
  
“They’re unnecessarily hard,” he says, as if it’s an explanation.   
  
“Maybe I should say that about your abs.”  
  
He gives her a look. It’s hard to decipher – or maybe it isn’t, it’s simply a look neither of them should, not right now in their tentative steps towards talking and sometimes extending a helping hand to the other again after abrupt end – so she smirks slight and only sips her coffee.   
  
Frank eyes her waffle warily when it comes before wielding his fork like a knife, tearing into his much more fluffy pancakes with zeal almost rivaling that which he has for coffee. Almost.   
  
She resists another tease, inwardly taking a victory lap since she was able to convince him to meet her at this diner, instead. It was good to see him eat. To relax, even if only just.   
  


* * *

 

Frank’s using her apartment as a hideaway of sorts – this is a first time, too, the first he’s ever done such a thing, and probably the first time she’d let him, barely four odd months since coming back into her life – which inadvertently means that he has to serve as her sounding board for the irritation of the day. Which, incidentally, was about him.   
  
“–and now Brett’s clammed up on me too. No one from the department wants to talk about The Punisher anymore, not even anonymously. They’re all turning on each other like one of them’s always giving you tip offs to avoid arrest. That’s what Brett floated.”  
  
“That’s not exactly accurate–”  
  
“I know,” she sighs to herself.  
  
“If there’s blame to go ‘round, it’s on sidewalks. They can’t keep me off the streets.”  
  
She stumbles out of her second heel.   
  
Frank’s near the window at the edge of the kitchen with coffee in hand, fingers tapping over a keyboard on his small and honestly quite tactical-looking laptop occasionally, eyes focused solely on the screen.   
  
Karen squints at him. He keeps tapping.   
  
“…Oh my god. You save dad jokes.”  
  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, ma'am.”  
  
He takes a sip. She shakes her head.   
  
It isn’t until later when he leaves at two in the morning that she realizes he’d managed to completely ease her stress with that one bizarre distraction. 

 

* * *

 

She notices his lips curving in resemblance of a smile more often. He tells more of those awful jokes, too.   
  
A workday has her crossing paths with him after an unsavory encounter with a gang member she thought was willing to be a source, maybe even one she could spin into a police informant for a bust. The big break in her investigative piece, and for the police – at the very least, she’d racked up another favor with Brett finally spilling some information to her again, and this would be a nice way to repay her debts.   
  
Instead, though, she’d had to wrestle against his gun in the close confines of the car, taking a stars-inducing hit to the cheek at one point, until Frank smashed in the window and dragged the man from the driver’s side.   
  
“Got your news briefs on again?” Is all he levels her direction after knocking the criminal out cold. He’s itching to do more and she can see it – see it in his twitching fingers, the pistol gripped with pressed-white skin in hand, wild eyes that keep bouncing as he thinks.   
  
Eyebrows furrowing in concern, she steps out on the other side and reaches a hand part way across the space. “Frank.”  
  
He turns his head then but his eyes still bounce around, over, and away from her.   
  
She tries for brevity with a huff. “That’s the only underwear reporters wear, you know.”  
  
His lips twitch, hard and fast. He tucks the gun away. “You got this?”  
  
Karen holds up her phone to show 911 already dialed, ready to hit send. “I got this…. I can be clever too.”  
  
A pain and a laugh war across his face. Both lose to pensive thought when he catches sight of her bruise. He lingers during her call, longer than he should, only parting when the sirens start up a few blocks away. His eyes caress her bruise like a gentle touch the entire time. 

The criminal on the ground gets an extra kick to the throat before Frank disappears. 

 

* * *

 

“Christ, are you alright?”  
  
She’s got her hands all over him, supporting him staying upright where she found him on her rooftop after a short text request for towels. He didn’t normally message her without a basic greeting like that. He never messaged her with straight requests.   
  
The reason for the exception was easily identifiable when she found him in the middle of stitching himself up from a rather sizable gash running ribs to hip.   
  
“No,” Frank manages after pulling the thread out of his teeth where he’s held it for one-handed leverage. “I’ve got a left side, too.”  
  
She’s got the rest of his shirt up, thin fingers scouring over bruised skin on the other half of his ribcage, before she realizes it’s just a joke. She hits his uninjured shoulder.   
  
“Got quite a punch there, ma'am.”  
  
“Do you know how worried I was?!”  
  
He sets the knife and needle aside, stitches tied off. He ventures a light touch of rough skin on her wrist. “I’m sorry.”  
  
It’s earnest, but of course it is – of course he always tries his best to keep her out of his life’s bloody choices to the point that it’s maddening to her, maddening not to fully know. Karen grabs his hand with her own, more fingers desperately holding fingers than anything, but she holds tight. “Promise you won’t do that again.”  
  
“A terse sigh cuts from him, matching the weighted look to his eyes. “Which part? The text or the joke?”  
  
“Call me next time. Explain, immediately. Don’t leave me in the dark.”  _Don’t leave me again_.   
  
He nods, jerkily, but it’s a nod. A promise. His hand turns in her grip to press palm against palm more solidly as he leans his head back, exhaustion starting to hit.   
  
“My couch is more comfortable.”  
  
“I’ll stain it.”  
  
Karen grimaces at the sticky swaths of red around him, under him, on him. She resists immediately reaching for a towel, savaging one more minute with them like this. “And I’ll scoff at your dad jokes. But it’s still better than this.”  
  
He raises a brow at her and, firm stare exchanged, resigns himself. “'Fraid I don’t have many left in me right now.”  
  
“Damn. I was starting to like them.”

 

* * *

 

A year has passed, five or take some weeks, and Matt shows back up. Or, rather, that is to say Daredevil shows back up and Matt follows behind. He’s not in the news yet as his alter ego – back miraculously from 300 feet under – but Karen’s known from the murmurs on the street for about two weeks now, two long weeks attempting denial of it all and feeling a forceful surge of hope anyway before he shows back up in front of her.   
  
He has an incredibly intricate explanation that spawns from a beginning of a rescue and recovery outside of his control. It’s all very worthy of a hero’s luck, and she can’t necessarily blame him for that part.   
  
But she can for the rest of it. She can for the time that passed long after he woke back up. She stays pissed.   
  
It’s one such evening after the three of them go drinking, a carnival mirror reflection of old times. It devolved into bringing out her anger around the third beer and second round of shots. Foggy, for his part, unleashed his own frustrations as well. Matt revealed some of his own, though it was heavily peppered with talk of reborn purposes and a revitalized spirit of life.   
  
He leaves first, inevitably, which is how Karen finds herself more ranting to than talking with Foggy before realizing with a blink that Frank’s slid in next to her and Foggy’s asleep on the bar top. Right, Frank. She’d texted him.   
  
“Murdock again?” He sighs, slipping her beer from her hand to repurpose it for his own consumption.  
  
“Yes!” She immediately picks up, fire itching its way along her spine, flush of alcohol gone wrong. “He wouldn’t– he wouldn’t listen to me. I don’t get it, him just– swinging back in our lives this way. Well, swinging is Spider-Man’s gimmick…. And he– you know he tries to tell us it was a good thing? A learning experience? Or lesson or whatever bullcrap. Like that’s enough to make us forget that grief and guilt and– and– Give me back my beer.”  
  
He ignores the request. “You wanna know how to shut Red up next time?”  
  
She’s considering if her reflexes are still fast enough to steal the bottle back but pauses, head tilted. “Okay. How?”  
  
“Ask how you make ice cream. He’ll get stuck – so you tell him it’s taught at Sunday School. Suggest he go try it again and only come back when he’s got it.”  
  
It takes her a minute. She laughs.   
  
Full belly, wheezing out her throat, Karen laughs so hard she clutches the counter to keep from falling off the stool.   
  
When she’s able to catch a breath, Frank is finishing her beer while keeping a firm hand on her back. It’s grounding. Soothing. “Thank you.”  
  
He nods.   
  
“Really.”  
  
He taps his temple. “It’s an endless arsenal up here.”  
  
Karen grins wider than she normally would. “Good. I’d miss them.”   
  
 _I’d miss you._  
  
Frank tucks a strand of hair out of her face and quickly retreats, seeming to chastise himself internally for it, shoulders tending. Karen watches his full range of emotions until he’s put some money on the counter and stood. “You got someone to call for Nelson?”  
  
She thinks of Marci, the number she never thought she’d actually use, and nods.   
  
Frank gestures to the door with his head. “I’ll be outside. Take you home.”  
  
Karen watches him start to go before calling out. “Hey! I got one for you. How’s holy water made?”  
  
Frank rolls his lips, smile of anticipation threatening.   
  
“You boil the hell out of it.”  
  
He chuckles this time. She hopes she remembers the sound of it in the morning. One of her crowning achievements, she thinks, it’s a beautiful sound. “Use that one on Murdock next time. It’s better.”  
  
“One bad religion joke at a time.”  
  
His smirk makes her grin. She thinks she might have to pick up a book on dad jokes, reverse the scales and surprise him with more them more often, just to get that laugh again. But, that was a decision best finalized sober.   
  
She lets him take her home with bruised knuckles and a protective gaze instead.


	13. first meeting in The Punisher (street)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ porgs-r-us asked: For the Kastle fic prompts, maybe their first meeting in The Punisher? C: Thank you!! ]

Winter winds billow through the city unpredictably, still as dirt one hour and as ferocious as high tide the next. 

Karen’s in the midst of braving a blustering breeze nipping at her skin, acting rather foolishly honestly as she walks the long six blocks back to The Bulletin, but she needs this foolish distraction of cold. All her work and time spent today – spent rising early on little sleep, spent waiting about on City Hall after being subjected to high security screening, spent wasting away superficial conversations with other reporters from other outlets she was less than positive about – had all been one giant bust. Press conference canceled and barely a story scraped out of it now.   
  
It had been rumored to be about a massive shakeup in the Department of Transportation. Karen had been excited, following her own leads on corruption there for a while. Now, she ties her coat around herself more roughly, hands jammed in pockets. Ellison will say she’s sulking. Maybe she is.   
  
The greater truth lies in Karen finding herself at square one in her next piece, again, and with nothing ahead of her for the rest of the day except an empty evening and haunting memories. Matt’s wake was just yesterday. Just yesterday she’d had to sit in that church, again, suffocated and trapped by herself, by her mind replaying everything she could’ve done wrong, every way she or Foggy could have changed the circumstances, could have saved–  
  
Karen clenches her jaw tight when her shoulder slams into another person on the street, mumbles an apology. She hears sifting coins then and casts her eyes about warily. Anything for a distraction.   
  
In a minute, she’s spied him, a man homeless and sheltering under an army green blanket at the mouth of an alleyway. The cup of change rocks methodically in his hand. Doesn’t seem like much of a druggie, she thinks to herself, but she’s already pausing in front of him anyway. She never could resist passing on a good deed done.   
  
Fumbling in her pocket, Karen manages to fish a five dollar bill out and folds it into the paper cup. She wouldn’t be able to afford this generous heart so often if she wasn’t always living a shoestring lifestyle anyway. Takeout leftovers, warmed up coffees, accidental half-day (or longer) fasts. It was the easiest way to survive on her meager journalist salary, anyway. She flashes a smile with eyes downcast, catching on the man’s boots.   
  
They almost looked familiar, pulling at some part of her mind. She shakes her head and turns away.   
  
“Ma'am.”  
  
Half-spun on her heel, arched like a swan, Karen freezes in a way that has nothing to do with the chill numbing her calves. Her breath stutters out for a moment.   
  
He’s shifting behind her now, blanket sliding off, and curiosity gets the better of her to face back, to confirm.   
  
“Frank.”  
  
She gasps his name like a question. He grimaces. It’s hard to tell if it’s from her voicing his name aloud or from his own guilt within.   
  
Bearded, hair wild, he’s a mess. A complete and utter mess. And he’s never looked more alive.   
  
She wants to reach a hand out. A hysterical laugh builds in her throat instead. “What the hell is this?” She barely manages.   
  
“We need to talk.” He’s folding the blanket up, cup set aside, fidgeting a hand with the hood pulled over his ball-cap now as his eyes scan the crowd flowing innocuously around them. “I need to talk, to you,” Frank corrects with a look meeting her eyes.   
  
Her head shakes. “I don’t believe this. No, I can’t believe this. What– Where have you been?”  
  
“…Lying low.”

“That’s not enough.”  
  
His eyes search hers, pass over and through her, and Karen hadn’t been aware of how long it’s been since someone looked at her like this. Like they’re reading her as a book instead of prodding against a lock. Until now. “Ma'am.”  
  
It sounds like a ‘please’. She sighs, lets her face drop from anger to the truth of wide-eyed worry and apprehension underneath. “Where have you been, Frank?”  
  
He swallows, that same pain and grief as evident as ever in the lines creasing along his eyes, forehead. “Looking for a way to live.”  
  
A step closer. The wind whips a gust at her hair, chills dancing down her spine. “Did you find it?”  
  
He shakes his head. “Think this is just me now.”  
  
Karen already knew, saw it plain as day, but nods at the honesty anyway. It’s a punch in the gut but it’s refreshing to know where he stands, where they stand, as he asks for an audience and waits for a rejection, maybe even a better attempt at a fight.   
  
She wants to reach out, she really does. He looks warm and solid and so shockingly alive, and she could cling to that, would have a hard time letting that go again, even if it wasn’t much of her choice, again. Her eyes cast over the bag at his feet and blanket in hand before she nods, shifting so they’re more shoulder near shoulder. “I know a place; decent coffee, not far. They won’t look twice at you.”  
  
A cruel mockery of self-deprecation twists his lips. “People already forgot my face fast. Took you hearin’ my voice.”  
  
She watches him sling the bag over shoulder. “Sometimes it’s easier to stop looking. Doesn’t mean you forget.”  
  
Frank’s gaze settles on her. They start walking. “Yeah,” he says under his breath. “Maybe you’re right.”  
  
He holds the five dollar bill out to her. She slips it back from his gentle grip and into her pocket.


	14. Karen saving Frank's life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ meinhiding asked: Still asking for Kastle prompts? If so, maybe Karen saving Frank's life. Fluff and/or smut would be appreciated. Thanks, babe :) ]

Karen’s made a lot of reckless choices in her lifetime, but as she blocks the stairwell door with a broom and mop off the cleaning cart and goes running up the steps, she thinks this might be the worst of all those choices. Well, for now.   
  
If they get out of here, she’s got plenty of time to make more.  
  
Ten flights of stairs is enough to have Karen slipping her heels off sooner than later, throwing them in her bag. By the time she’s bursting through the rooftop door, she’s glad she forewent the panty hose today – they’d be shredded along her feet by now – and is starting to feel a thin layer of sweat blossom across her skin.   
  
“You’re insane!” Is the greeting he gets. It’s a holler over the sirens.   
  
Frank’s fast, rifle propped in one hand against the ledge but a quick pistol in the other, pointed to the door and dropped back to his side in a split second of a motion as soon as she and she alone appears. “Christ, what are you doing?”  
  
“What are you doing?!”  
  
He curses an expletive underneath his breath. Karen looks around, heart hammering hard against her rib cage, but there’s nothing to block this door with. She wonders how long the other one will hold, only plastic handles providing a meager slowdown attempt for what’s about to be a large show of force.   
  
This was a really bad idea. But so was Frank being bold enough to show up at an ongoing kidnapping situation in the heart of the city that the police were already responding to.   
  
She’s turning around to warn him just how limited his time is when a shot pierces the air, loud enough to make her wince and curve into herself, hands flying up to her ears. A slight puff of smoke curls around the edge of his barrel, visible by how stark it is against the dusky darkness blanketing the city. A beat passes and then Frank’s pulling the rifle off the ledge.   
  
Karen picks up his backpack while he re-sheaths the gun in its own bag, doesn’t even think about what she’s doing beyond her helping, her speeding him along, until he looks at her funny.   
  
She ignores it. They don’t have the time to debate the size of her role in his Punisher activities.   
  
“Everyone’s okay?”  
  
Frank nods, throwing the bag over his shoulder. “Couple bruises is all. He didn’t get a chance to do more. But he was close. Cops would’ve been too late.”  
  
Karen’s already rushing down the fire escape stairs along the other side of the roof, moving ahead of him.   
  
“You shouldn’t be here.”  
  
“You could thank me for saving your ass,” she bites, dropping the ladder into the alley, grateful that the police hadn’t positioned any manpower here in case it would’ve alerted Frank.   
  
As soon as she’s got her feet on the rungs, the metal door above them bursts open, cops barreling onto the roof, and then Frank’s jumping over the fire escape’s railing to move faster. He grabs her waist to get her down on the ground with him in one swift motion before his hand is sliding to her arm. She meets him halfway in a fireman’s grip as they sprint out of the alleyway a few short seconds before they can be seen.   
  
They run directly opposite of the buildings on lockdown, weaving through alleyways Frank obviously knows by heart. Karen’s more than a little bewildered to discover how well her internal compass is helping her keep track, too.   
  
They’re at the edge of downtown when they slow, and Frank pulls away first, albeit reluctantly. Her hand lingers on his arm a bit longer before she finally breaks the tense silence. “You’re lucky I was in there covering the story before you showed up. They were planning for a stealth attack. Take you by surprise.”

“Yeah. ‘Cause I’m more dangerous than the asshole holding an office floor hostage.”  
  
Karen watches a muscle on his jaw twitch, catches his eyes flickering in her direction.   
  
“Where’s your shoes?”  
  
Right. She was still barefoot. “Ah. Hang on.”   
  
Karen stops and leans against an old brick wall of a foreclosed shop as she pulls her heels back out. It’s more than a little uncomfortable, tucking her spread out toes once more into the confines of leather, but it’s better than walking on dirty streets like this any longer.   
  
It was a miracle she hadn’t been cut by something already – maybe she just didn’t feel it yet, adrenaline continuing to pump harshly through her veins.   
  
“Anyone see you?” He asks suddenly. She knows he’s been sitting on that question for a while now.   
  
“See me slip into the stairwell? No.”  
  
They’re heading back to her apartment, she realizes then. This part of town, moving from alley to alley as they are, they encounter few people. Frank’s got his coat pulled to cover up the painted skull, ballcap slung over his eyes, making Karen’s visage decidedly more ruffled and wind worn than his. Still, no one looks twice.   
  
She’s glad. It makes the anger rolling off him easier to tolerate, knowing they don’t have an audience to deal with.   
  
“Just say it.”  
  
He grunts, noncommittal.   
  
She rolls her eyes.   
  
When they reach her apartment building, he starts to turn away, but one look from her as sirens wail not far off in the distance and he’s following her in, clenching his jaw again. “I don’t want you involved anymore, not like this,” he says after closing her door behind her.   
  
Karen slips off her shoes with a sigh of relief and flips the TV on. Local news blares out a feverish report on the successful kidnapping rescue as police turn their sights on hunting down The Punisher in the aftermath. She mutes it, unable to take the ridiculous and entirely hypocritical drama of it all.   
  
“You’re gonna get hurt. Or caught. Or blamed.”  
  
“I can take care of myself,” she says, facing him.   
  
“That’s exactly what I’m telling you to do.”  
  
“But I’m not just going to stand by when I can help.”  
  
His eyes darken. “And I’m not watching you throw your life away. Not like this, not for me.”  
  
“So I’m not getting a thank you?” Karen retorts.   
  
“Dammit, ma'am. Anyone sees you with me–”  
  
“No one did. I was careful, Frank, I’m not an idiot.” She walks between him and the pile of his bags on the floor to hang her coat up on the wall. As soon as she’s got it up, one of his hands is tugging at her wrist, gentle but persistent. Karen meets his eyes.   
  
“It was too close,” he grounds out.   
  
She steps forward, mirroring his frustration with her own. “You’d be in cuffs right now if I hadn’t blocked that stairwell. Or worse, you’d have ten new charges of assault on a police officer added to your arrest warrant!”  
  
“That’s my problem–”

“I’m not letting you go back to jail, you ungrateful asshole–”  
  
“Stop caring about me!”  
  
Heart hammering from a different kind of adrenaline now, he steals the breath from her lungs with the words, almost a slap to the face that they are, but she’s hyper aware of how they’re both leaning toward each other, how he’s breathing as hard as her, how his hand’s tightened its grip.   
  
Actions at war with his words.   
  
Karen watches his eyes turn hooded, wary, just like hers. “You first,” she challenges back. Waits.   
  
They slam into each other, reaching at the same time, and his mouth slants over hers with enough force to bruise, but then she’s running her hands through his hair, pulling, and with that one motion he’s putty in her hold, groaning. His hands move to her hips, slot them together as she sucks on his bottom lip and opens his mouth.   
  
Why hadn’t they done this sooner? The tension is overwhelming, his hands spreading fire everywhere they touch, and she wants more. Needs more.   
  
Karen pushes at his coat and he follows her lead, shrugging it off before brushing her hair aside and pressing butterfly kisses along the column of her throat. She gasps. He’s got the zipper of her dress halfway down her back before her wandering hands are pushing up his shirt. Pulling back enough to rip it over his head, she takes in the view of his chest.   
  
She’s seen it plenty of times already but the situations were much too dire to really take notice, let alone ogle. Now, Karen’s fingers trace scars and bruises almost reverently – some she recognized, some she didn’t. One cut along his collarbone she’d stitched up herself months ago. She kisses it without thinking. Frank shudders before his hands find her jaw, so gentle she could cry, and captures her lips.   
  
They mellow out then, intimacy shifting and molding into a different form.   
  
They stumble across the space until her calves hit against the mattress. She pulls him down with her until he breaks away, makes her bite back a whine as she pushes up on her elbows, only to watch him kick off his boots. With one of her hands on his belt, he’s cradling her head again, leaning down, but he holds back, their breaths mingling together.   
  
“Frank?” Her voice is quiet, barely a whisper.   
  
She feels small in his hands, as if all her limbs are being reduced to her heart right this moment, and he’s got the power to break it. To break her with the softest touch she’s ever felt.   
  
Foreheads pressed together, Frank closes his eyes, swallows hard. “We shouldn’t.”  
  
“Look at me,” she asks. Pleads.   
  
After a long moment, he does. What she finds there makes all the words die on her tongue.   
  
There’s intensity, of course, born of the tension that’s built between them for way too many months – if not longer – but there’s more. So much more in a massive and conflicting swirl. Fear and warmth, concern and desire, guilt and something scarily close to love.

Nothing feels right to say. Convincing him suddenly strikes her as a violation, a betrayal of their trust. If he pulls away, says no, puts that wall back up, she can’t do anything but respect that.   
  
He’s right. They shouldn’t do this.   
  
Karen’s hands raise to his jaw instead, thumbs rubbing circles along his stubble as she watches his Adam’s apple bob with sad eyes. She expects him to give some inclination of an apology, to disengage.   
  
He kisses her with a featherlight touch.   
  
Now she’s the one afraid – afraid it’s temporary, that this is the apology and it won’t last – but then he’s got a hold of her zipper again, tender hands on her back to support her, to free the rest of her dress before he’s pushing it off her shoulders. She sighs and deepens the kiss as air tickles her exposed skin.   
  
Pushing it down her body, she helps him with the dress the rest of the way, tossing it to a corner with a flick of her ankle before he’s settling on top of her. The weight of him is nice and solid. Perfect, even.   
  
Hips pressing up, Frank meets her wanting as his mouth slides back to her neck, grinning against her when a moan escapes her lips. She drags her nails along his back, part retaliation and part urgency for more.   
  
He’s mapping a trail down her body and she almost chides him for it, almost begs him to come back up so she can help him with that belt, but then he’s tugging her panties off and burying his head between her thighs, sending a shock of pleasure through her body with his mouth.   
  
She gasps. He presses further.   
  
Karen comes undone quickly, hands buried in his hair to urge him on, urge him to move faster, until his tongue is circling her clit, fingers curling inside her, and she’s crying out his name. It takes her a moment to remember to breath and then Frank’s there and she easily matches his pace as she tastes herself on his tongue. She bites his lip as her legs encircle his waist.   
  
He’s hard, more than ready, and yet acting utterly patient, threading his hands through her blonde tresses over and over as he attempts to devour her. They could stay like this forever, she thinks distantly as she grinds against him, makes him hiss and jerk his hips.   
  
She’d be more than happy if they could.   
  
Karen snakes a hand between them, taking hold of him, and he groans again, kiss breaking slightly as he grips one of her hips. Lining them up, he enters her in one fluid motion, filling her and falling into a rhythm immediately. She arches further against him, nails along his back, matching thrust for thrust.

He gives up trying to reclaim her mouth as they move, sucking along her jaw instead. It makes her skin tingle and prick. She hopes it bruises, wants to see it in the mirror later – see his mark on her the same way he’ll see hers from her nails digging against his shoulder blades as she feels his back muscles ripple.   
  
“Fuck, Frank.”  
  
“Karen,” he breaths against her, almost pulls her apart with the single utterance of her name before dissolving back into jumbled curses and praises.   
  
She keeps pace as he thrusts into her deeper and deeper, pressing her heels against his spine after he shifts her hips, until his speed turns erratic and then he’s coming, spilling into her, and she lets go of the last threads of her control and follows him over the edge.   
  
Only a few seconds pass before he’s rolling off of her and she feels the loss of his warmth immediately. They stare up at the ceiling, panting.   
  
“So,” Karen says shakily. “Is that my thank you?”  
  
Frank laughs, arm slinging over his face.   
  
Curling on her side, she nudges his leg with hers, head propped up slightly on her hands. He turns his head to look at her, eyes dropping to where she’s worrying her lip. “This…isn’t a one time thing…. Right?”  
  
Thumb tracing her jaw, he meets her in a languid kiss, hand falling to her thigh as he pulls her on top of him. He was a welcome weight on top of her, but she more than likes this too, treasuring the way he looks up at her as if he’s memorizing someone worthy. “No, its not.”  
  
She can’t help the way she grins, wide and fast, relief all too plain to see. “Good.”  
  
His hands map her curves as his nose bumps hers, hungry for more. She meets him halfway.


	15. things you said at the kitchen table

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Anonymous asked: kastle and 13? :) ]
> 
> 13 - things you said at the kitchen table

 

Karen knows he’s watching her. She doesn’t blame him – keeps expecting him to tell her to stop, actually, or just call out a low “Ma'am” in that certain way that holds a silent plea in it, different from when he’s saying hello, when he’s frustrated, when he’s teasing for a brief half a second she manages to distract him on simpler thoughts. But he doesn’t say anything.

The silence of words prickles a borderline uncomfortable tension through the air as she steps softly through his space and studies all his things as an archaeologist would a pile of bones. Keyboard clicks sound as he goes through the steps Micro gave him for their contingency plan before disappearing off to God knows where to take care of something else urgent.

Their ‘fall off the grid for a couple days’ contingency plan had been forced to accommodate one more soul.

Karen shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t know about their plan. She shouldn’t know why they needed it, just how many alphabet soup groups – governmental and government-adjacent – were currently hunting the pair down. Maybe once upon a time that would’ve worried her as much as it did Frank, but Karen had long since been going places and digging up things she shouldn’t.

When he starts unzipping a duffel bag, she runs a finger lightly over a stack of books. “Starting a collection?” She asks, daring to be the first to speak after they found themselves covered in plaster dust and dodging through alleyways.

He snorts.

With a fond smile cast to his dozens of volumes more classical in nature than not, Karen lifts her head and turns around.

Frank’s eyes flicker away and down to the duffel he’s unloading on a table. A man caught staring. She walks over, nodding to the semblance of an alcove housing basic appliances at their right. “Nice kitchen. Which one of you does the cooking?”

He scoffs this time, face softening slight. “Don’t ask Micro ‘bout it. He’ll try selling you on his fancy diet of delicacies and greens and some other shit.”

“That’s…not what I was expecting from him.”

“Makes two of us.”

For a moment, Karen can pretend she didn’t have to haphazardly wipe dust from an explosion off her skin and clothes not half an hour ago. Pretend she’s not stuck in his main hideout for reasons of utmost security and danger, pretend it’s just the two of them catching up in the awkward moments of information trading on park benches and apartment windows as they lingered before resigning to parting ways once more.

It’s easy to pretend, and maybe it is for him too – until he stiffens with laser focus on her hand picking a Glock.

“This a .45?”

“.40,” he responds, watching her handle it carefully. Karen unloads it, casting a glance to the bullets in the magazine before considering it in her hands.

“Never seen you with this before.”

“Say that like you’ve seen me with many guns.”

“More than most probably get to say,” Karen comments dryly. Catches his fingers twitching on the edge of the sad excuse for a kitchen table. “What’s the kick on it?”

“Ma'am.” There it is. That version half-curious and half-wary, pressing out his gruff tone over her to see how she’ll react. A test to read her with.

She meets his eyes as she sets it down. “I’m defenseless right now, Frank, and I’ve thrown a giant wrench in your plans. You think I don’t realize that? I hate it. I hate this….”

“I won’t let anything happen to you. I won’t,” he says hard as soon as she’s sighing.

“I know…. It’s just. I walked into an ambush like an idiot, used by those– those pricks, making you sit on your ass now babysitting me. I don’t want you to feel like you have to. You don’t.”

“Ma'am…I don’t think you’d let anyone babysit you.”

She laughs for a soft second.

There’s a quirk to his brows at that, but the line of his mouth remains firm, eyes searching with depths perpetually hidden in a well of darkness. Frank picks the gun up then, spinning it effortless in his hand to offer her the grip. “Keep it; replace that .380 they took off you.”

Karen takes it slowly, wonders how he knew about that. Maybe that’s what he found in studying her restless hands moving over all of his few but powerful possessions. “You sure?”

He nods. “Won’t be holed up in here forever and I won’t leave you unarmed. I’d have to be a real giant asshole to do that.”

She thinks to when she called him one in the diner at a time that felt like years ago. Karen smiles warmly now. “Thanks, Frank.”

“I mean it though. Anything comes up, shit gets worse here for you– I won’t. I won’t….”

There’s a promise there he can’t fully say, can’t finish. A promise he can’t fully make despite how much he desperately wants to. They’re both too aware of how unpredictable and uncontrollable life can be. “I know, Frank,” she replies quietly.

He nods with a jerk of a motion, looking away to finishing emptying the bag. He slides a box of ammunition over to her.

Their fingers brush before she takes it off the table.


	16. things you said when you were scared

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ myguiltyghost asked: frank/karen, prompt #18 (things you said when you were scared) :333! ]  
> [ carry-the-sky asked: Kastle + 18 for the mini fics? :) ]
> 
> 18 - things you said when you were scared

There’s blood everywhere.

Mind blank, Karen pulls her hand from her leg and stares at the vibrant red clinging to her as if she’s just dunked it in paint for a palm-print turkeys project in 3rd grade art class. The thought almost makes her delirious, dragging her back to the last time she’d found herself in such a shockingly dire situation – hung upside down in a car torn to shreds, horrifying alone, ignoring the thick rivulets running down her head as she tried to wake her brother beside her.

Someone rushes and drops to their knees next to her now, large hand steadying on her neck as the other pushes apart the tear in her skirt to take stock of the damage. Tears spring to her eyes as she blinks them fast. Her vision clears briefly.

Frank rips her skirt farther up. She’d ask him what he was doing, but struggles to stay propped on her elbows instead, leaning against his comforting touch slightly while relief consumes her.

Snippets of the past couple hours run fleetingly through her mind as she attempts to recall how she got her, how she found herself with bruises across her arms and a long gash down her right leg. Reaching out, Karen grips tight fingers on Frank’s jacket. He’s asking her something – it takes her a minute to understand that, managing to when she catches the tone of his voice – but the words are lost to her.

She can’t begin to formulate any of her own.

The only thing keeping her from panicking or turning to anxious anger is knowing she’s not alone. Not this time. Not in the next minute, not as soon as he finishes tying his belt around her thigh to cut off circulation.

That relief is almost enough to distract her from the biting pain, at first, until he keeps tightening the belt, shocking her nerves and shuttering her heartbeat further. An unwilling scream rips through her throat as her knuckles turn white against black canvas. Frank’s mouth is still moving but she can’t hear him now, can’t begin to know what he’s saying as cold rivulets of numbness ripple down her leg harshly. They’re nearly as bad as the initial makeshift tourniquet’s squeezing.

She falls apart into sobs.

Frank slides his hand underneath her legs and picks her up, tucking her against his chest effortlessly. The hold is firm and solid enough to startle her.

“I’m sorry,” she chokes out. Karen doesn’t even know why she apologizes, what part she’s doing it for – the part where she got hurt, where she wasn’t careful enough, or where she’s made him responsible for her, where she’s making him care too much in the worst way – so she just turns her head against his chest and tries to clear her mind.

She has to think clearly. She has to stop crying.

She has to remember what happened and get over this pain so she can walk herself into the emergency room.

Frank rubs soothing circles with his thumb along her back, grip tightening where hers slips.

Lips press against the crown of her head. “You can’t leave me, Page, you can’t–” The words shudder against her hair in soft puffs, nearly too quiet to be heard over his heavy steps and jagged breaths, honks and sirens blaring in streets over.

But she does hear them, hidden among the mess of incoherently formed murmurs fumbling from his mouth. She strains to keep hold of his jacket, keep herself blinking despite how heavy her eyelids become, how blearily the world tilts.

“I’m the one that leaves, hm? Fuck– stay with me, Karen, you’re–” His breath catches. “Just stay with me. Won’t let you– Not– not you too, just stay awake now, yeah–”

Distantly, she knows she’s being folded into some kind of a seat. His vehicle. The sound of the car door went right past her ears without registering. He was going to get in serious trouble if he took her to a hospital himself, she thinks, but then his hand’s on her cheek and, even though it’s shaking this time, she leans into it and can’t help feeling dangerously safe.

She trusts him. She can close her eyes for just a moment. Just a moment.

Karen stops fighting against herself and passes out.


	17. things you said that i wasn't meant to hear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ nxtyourfirstrodeio asked: KASTLE + 20 ]  
> [ Anonymous asked: Kastle and 20? :) ]
> 
> 20 - things you said that i wasn't meant to hear

“I can’t believe I’m falling in love with you.”

Frank shouldn’t have stayed.

If he cared less, he wouldn’t have, but Karen had already been more than a few glasses of whiskey down when he arrived and thus far closer to drunkenness than sobriety. With a cut-off sigh, he takes up the stool on the other side of her that’s almost entirely shadowed. He glances to the door absently every minute as she talks next to him about anything and everything happening with the Bulletin, with that Nelson lawyer, with the neighbors and police and every other facet of her life at the moment.

He manages to get her to switch to beer when he orders his own. The weakened alcoholic intake doesn’t help any when the whiskey fully hits her bloodstream some fifteen minutes later, turning her talk into a free-forming ramble.

Therapy, that’s what this is. The thought makes him fidget with the glass bottle in his hand, rolling his shoulders and scanning his eyes more often than not. Just barely, he reigns in the urge to tap his foot against the metal bar underneath his boots.

He’d tell her to find a better excuse for a therapist if the rapidly depressive slump to her shoulders and troubled sorrow in her eyes wasn’t so harshly visible. It glared in front of him as if she was a glowing neon sign.

Frank didn’t know what to do with that. So, he stays. Listens absently as he nears the end of his bottle and keeps an ear out for an opening to offer calling it a night, long set on taking her home to make sure she’d get in safe and sound. He’s got the beer tipped to his lips when she mutters the confession under her breath.

He freezes.

Karen whips her head up, eyes snapped wide.

Slowly, he sets the bottle down. Waits for her to correct herself like she’d do normally, stumbling regardless of whether she was covering with a truthful explanation or a failure of an excuse.

A beat passes. She groans and drops her head down onto her forearms. “Fuck.”

“…Ma'am?”

“Can you just…pretend you didn’t hear anything? Can we do that? Christ, why couldn’t I get the blackout-drunk gene. Foggy, he’s my go-to– I shouldn’t have texted you– Why did I text you? Oh, Foggy’s working again. Fast track to partner is gonna kill him, but I guess I can’t judge there– Ellison worries, I know he does. I wish everyone would stop worrying but maybe some of that’s my own fault, you know– if he knew I was sitting next to you and how I was helping you sometimes, or how I felt–”

Frank watches her ramble herself in a circle back to the confession. She gasps again.

Swallowing hard, his eyes scan her continually. A flicker of amusement flares up at her attempt to bury herself further against the wooden bar-top, head firmly in the crook of her elbows now, groaning again. “Fuck. Where’s a crazy man or a ninja or a crazy ninja to hit me over the head when I need one?”

He snorts. “…Sure you’re not a black-out drunk, ma'am?”

“Painfully sure.”

“Hm.” Out of habit, Frank scans the emptying haunt once more before landing his gaze on his beer bottle absently in thought. It claws at him then, the uncomfortably hot press of guilt that itches underneath his skin whenever he lets himself think big picture – big picture about them.

They can’t do this forever. Hell, they can’t do this for much longer. Not really. This helping of hers was useful, undoubtedly, but the danger it put her in, the precarious way it hung like an anvil over everything she’s managed to continue building in her life after their paths crossed– that wasn’t worth it. Not for her to keep dealing with.

Not for him to bear the shame of.

Shame, because now here Karen was, draped across a bar-top next to him with more grace than someone this wasted should be, heart torn over feelings someone like him shouldn’t be alighting within her. Shouldn’t be giving her any reasons for. Frank swallows around a lump in his throat that tugs awfully close to something like panic.

“Come on,” he says gently. “Think it’s time you headed home.”

She nods, yet manages to avoid his gaze with a sheet of hair across half her face until they’re two blocks down the street and the fresh air has her straightening her shoulders some. Frank keeps his fingers on her wrist in a soft hold, though, as she continues bumping into him occasionally with unsteady steps. Her pulse thrums a low rhythm underneath his touch.

It’s grounding. It disturbs him with its ease.

“We can try. To forget it,” Karen says suddenly.

Her head finally turns his way, other hand tucking blonde strands back behind her ear. The streetlights cast her as a striking beacon of rustled coat, big blues, and desperate smile. He wishes he could give her the answer she wants.

But then he’d be lying. They’d be lying – acting one out with all of its overwhelming guilt, suffocating and wanting all at once.

He says nothing.

She still stops at the steps when they reach her building.

Just another reminder of what he shouldn’t do, people he shouldn’t stay around as he remembers how just six days ago he’d been knocking on her door for a late-night talk that could’ve waited another twelve hours. Except that he hadn’t wanted to wait; and he knew she’d be home. He always knew when she would be at the Bulletin or here, when she’d be working herself to the bone with a level of self-sacrificing focus that could sometimes come alarmingly close to his own.

The worst part of her accidental confession was knowing how much of himself was falling into that precarious pit right alongside her.

Karen wraps her arms around him before he understands what she’s doing, before he can decide whether to step back or step forward.

“Don’t just disappear,” she whispers past his ear. “Please.”

His fingers twitch at his sides. Frank thinks of blood and bullets, carousels and gravestones, coffees and goodbyes.

His voice is rough even to his own ears, but he manages. “You have my word.”

When she moves to pull away, his fingers find her wrist again, keeping her close enough to press a lingering kiss against her temple.

Frank tries not to think about how long he’s wanted to do this. Thinking only increases the panic in his throat, the weight of guilt heavy like lead in his veins, tips him closer than he wants to be to the edge of acknowledging that heady pit of unpredictable feelings. So, he doesn’t.

Karen looks back at him before closing the door, brows furrowed. He can’t give her those answers, either, but at least this time she doesn’t ask.


	18. things you said when you were drunk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Anonymous asked: Prompt 11 + Kastle (with frank as the drunk one just to mix it up ;)) ]
> 
> 11 - things you said when you were drunk

Karen starts keeping a ready stock of beers in her fridge at some point. Dark brews, because neither of them could give much of a care for particular brands but his one stipulation when she asked the first time they met up at a bar to trade information was, simply, “none of that lite shit.” It made her laugh. He gave her a look that was, for the moment, entirely forgetful of the rest of the world.

It’s long after then but several months before now that she began buying the occasional case at the store. They’ve fallen into a routine – a dangerous thing for either of them, routines, but it’s not their first with each other, and there’s something uncontrollably attractive about having someone, a space with someone, where everything between you is predictable. Comfortable.

Frank doesn’t drink often, but when he does they always manage to make a decent dent. They’re similar that way, too, only reaching for it when they’re looking to drown.

Case in point, there’s one unopened beer left in the fridge which she notes when she fetches a new one for herself. Karen pops the top before folding back into the couch. The TV runs mindlessly on low in front of them. She’s drinking at a slower pace than him tonight, end of a rough day and beginning of a recovering morning wherein she’s convinced him to stay over.

Once, he would’ve protested.

He taps his finger against the glass bottle dripping condensation onto his jeans, stares at her.

Karen takes another drink before setting her beer on the coffee table. “What?”

Frank shakes his head, frown tugging his lips down. Half of his face is covered in bruises again, freshly red and angry, but as she stares back stubbornly she notes the inflammation isn’t so bad this time. They’d only be surface for a while.

The beer switches hands then and her eyes widen from kind to confused when he’s brushing a strand of blonde out of her face, fingers half-buried in her hair as his thumb gently traces the gash at the left side of her forehead. It was sealed now, cleaned up and stitching itself back together with tape of a bandage holding it closed. There hadn’t even been much bleeding after the initial blow.

She’d assure him of that, again – remind him it was nothing, that they’ve been through worse – but something about the squint of his eyes and the way his pupils are blown open steals the breath from her. That, and the alcohol settling into her veins, lightening her self-control.

Karen leans her shoulder into the couch cushions as her head tilts the other way. Towards his touch.

“How bad was it?” He asks. The words ground out surprisingly rough.

Her brows furrow. “Well, you cleaned it up–”

“In the forest, past Schoonover’s place.” She blinks. Frank searches her gaze. “I checked your pulse, checked for open wounds. You weren’t bleeding much at first but when you walked up– the way it was coming down, I didn’t know. And that shoulder you were nursing…. How hurt were you, really?”

Desperate, his thumb’s swiping a ghost of a touch closer to her hairline now, closer to the long-past-healed wound still visible in his mind’s eye.

Remembering that night spreads a chill across her skin. His feels a touch feverish against hers. She thinks of the half-dislocated shoulder that she was given painkillers for before the doctor in the emergency room reset it, that cut on her forehead that took two stitches, the bruises and scrapes on her knees where she’d fallen to the road in tears. That last part he didn’t know about.

Karen shakes her head. “I’m fine.”

“Not what I asked.”

“Frank, please–”

“I’m sorry.” The apology rushes out, choked. His grip slips further to cradle her cheek and the haunt to his eyes makes her swallow. “I’m so sorry. I should’ve thought up another way, done it differently. I should’ve been more careful with you.”

“Frank….” Her fingers pry his grip away, turning his hand until she’s entwining theirs together. “It’s okay. I forgive you. I forgave you that night.”

He rests his forehead softly against hers. Karen hadn’t realized they were so close, drawn into each other’s space, until now. Their breaths mingle. “Why?”

“Because… I knew why you did it. Hell, I might’ve done the same thing in your position.” Frank scoffs. Flickering her eyes to their hands between their laps now, she bites her lip. “I mean it. You did it to save me…. That part was never what upset me about that night.”

He squeezes her hand, briefly, before tipping his head alongside hers. His voice is a whisper above the shell of her ear. “I’m sorry, Karen.” She knows he’s not talking about her head wound anymore.

Wrapping her arms around his shoulders, she buries her head into the crook of his neck and feels him do the same. “…I forgave you for that, too, Frank.”

His hand spreads warm and solid along her back, pulling her ever closer with a shuddering sigh. She gladly complies.


	19. that time of the month

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Anonymous asked: First off, I LOVE LOVE your writing! Second, would it be weird to ask if you could maybe write something set post S2 where it's that time of month for Karen and she's having a tough time with cramps and her emotions and then enter Frank who does whatever he can to comfort her and get her through the week. And this could lead to a "not actually dead to me," conversation between them since Karen would be even more emotional at the time. I'll totally understand if the request isn't your cup of tea. ]

 

Karen Page was having a bad week.

The most important problem was that the piece she’d begged Ellison for, her first piece that she was solely responsible for investigating, writing up, and delivering on his desk by Saturday at noon… was going nowhere. Fast.

Everything after that just snowballed on top.

Her landlord accosting her with a bill for extra bullshit fees after she’d given notice of not renewing the lease in two months. News of Doris Urich being admitted to Hospice because she was declining too fast. Matt disappearing out of contact and off the grid for a couple days, freaking out Foggy who then freaked her out, only to resurface with an excuse of needing a break. A random and somewhat creepy unsigned note under her windshield the other day warning her about her article’s person of interest.

And then came the sprinkles on top of one of the worser life sundaes she’s had to deal with – her period. The bad one.

Back in Fagan Corners, Karen had been seen as one of the more blessed girls among her peers before the accident. Good looks, athletically inclined, work ethic praised by her teachers, and with parents that seemingly only had connections and influence to help their children with. Among her female peers, there was also the occasional prod about how unaffected she seemed to be from that time of the month.

The problem with that compliment was that none of them were really her friends – so none of them realized why she took sick days about every fourth month, lying in bed with take-home homework stacked on her desk, writhing in pain and trying not to let the tears fall.

Like now. Except she wasn’t in bed, she was in her car parked on a residential street after interviewing an admittedly not-very-helpful source. Karen had barely been able to keep her facade of calm, cool, and collected up until they closed the door behind her.

Fumbling for her purse, she searches for the bottle of ibuprofen tucked away. It was in here somewhere, she knew it, but the fact that it’s avoiding her fingers makes her mutter curses under her breath before another round of cramps tears through her lower back. She curls into herself with a whine.

The bottle rolls out into her lap.

“Of course,” she says with no small amount of bitterness.

Karen pops two and waits, taking a deep breath, before her eyes catch on it. Another note held down by the windshield wiper. Warily, she rolls down her window to grab it.

‘Someone’s following you. Keep an eye out.’

Her head whips up, scanning her surroundings. Was anything out of place? She’d been in that building for the past hour and a half; she’d have no idea if anyone rolled up after or if anyone was parked near that shouldn’t be. She sighs at the note and hurries to start the car.

It’d almost be a relief – those words casting whoever the sender was in a slightly less creepy light than before – if the possibility of having now two very unknown stalkers didn’t leave her so disturbed.

 

* * *

 

The clock blinks past midnight when there’s a knock at her door.

It takes Karen a minute to hear it, partly because of how softly it sounds against the wood and how out of it she is, staring at the computer screen in front of her trying to make sense of the words she’s spent the past several hours writing. They all sounded like shit. Ellison was going to be disappointed.

She throws that frustration to the back of her mind when the knocks sound again, reaching for her gun out of habit. The figure in the peephole stops her breath for a dizzying second.

It couldn’t be. He wouldn’t be here.

And yet.

Opening the door, a very real and very alive Frank Castle stands on the other side.

“What….” There’s a hundred questions she could ask, a hundred more observations she could make about his scruffy state, and maybe even a slap her hand’s itching to give. The one not holding a gun right now, at least.

His eyes flicker to it without giving anything away before he nods to the space behind her. “Can I come in?”

The question’s glaringly mundane.

Karen has half a mind to refuse. Tell him no, slam the door on his face, or think up some vicious retort more yell than anything else – but all those ideas would be regretted as soon as she did them, as soon as he’d turn his back and slip from sight. She reigns in her irrationally exploding anger and grasps desperately for the sliver of numbing curiosity.

She steps aside. He brushes past, careful not to really touch her.

That flares sadness in her hard and fast, reasons unknown. Karen swallows hard to push it aside and inwardly bemoans her period’s problems for the twentieth time today.

“I’m moving to a new place, soon,” she says by way of explanation when Frank steps around the boxes haphazardly lining the back of her couch and on the kitchen table that’s never served much of a use until now.

If he’s surprised, he doesn’t show it. “The notes….Didn’t scare you too bad with ‘em, did I?”

Blinking a couple times, Karen lets that settle in. She huffs. “I never thought about….” She shakes her head. “So, those were you. That makes a lot more sense.” And brought up a dozen more questions in need of answers.

Pressure builds low in her again. She hugs an arm around her middle after putting the gun back in its drawer and leans against the edge of the desk. He’s practically at the opposite side of her apartment, by the windows. At least four big pieces of furniture sit between them. A prickly sadness this time attempts weaving thorns around her lungs.

She clears her throat. “Why’re you here? Aside from delivering another warning against me doing my job, but I’m used to hearing those, so let’s just get that out of the way first.”

Frank scoffs. “I’m not telling you to drop it, ma'am. I know you won’t and that’s not what I meant.”

She could smile if the ibuprofen wasn’t wearing off so fast. Her lips only quirk tightly.

“But someone is following you. A sketchy PI I can’t dig up much on, hired by that lead of yours.”

“You think he’ll try to hurt me.” It’s not a question.

Frank nods stiffly. Frustration rolls off of him. “Something’s off. Just need to be careful.”

“I become anymore paranoid and someone’s bound to think I’m going crazy,” Karen says, a poor excuse of a joke, but it’s quickly discarded when a cramp twists its way through her, sharp as a knife.

He’s moving before she’s able to catch her breath enough to gasp, before her hands are clutching at her sides and massaging them uselessly. “What happened?”

Holding her forearms gently, she’s torn embarrassingly between startling at the touch and sinking into it. Why was he back now? Why had he come back at all when she’d just managed to start convincing herself that she was fine with never seeing him again? Frank had said he was already as good as dead, but he was doing a poor job of proving that right now.

She blinks her eyes open. Panic is etched within distraught lines across his face.

A frown tugs at her, guilty for how she’s making him fret. “It’s nothing. Nothing happened, I’m okay. I’ll be okay.”

He doesn’t look convinced. One of his hands slides down her arm to her own hand, pressing there alongside hers, and she thinks he’s about three seconds from peeling her shirt hem up to inspect for himself, propriety be damned.

She sighs and her gaze skitters away. “It’s my– ugh. That time of the month. Alright?”

Embarrassment buries her in a hot flash. Karen wishes she was being swallowed up by the ground, instead.

 

* * *

 

He goes through her medicine cabinet to get her pills without asking.

He hands the discarded heating pad over silently after she sits back down.

He dumps her coffee down the drain.

That makes Karen snap of her shocked daze. “Hey, I need that–”

“It’ll make you worse.”

Mouth open, she almost asks how he knows, how he could possibly know more than she does about period aggressors, but the turbulent swirl of indignation and annoyance isn’t enough to completely cloud her thoughts as the still-present worry on his face clicks into place.

Of course he knew. He’d had a wife, two kids. How many times would he have been there for Maria, helping her?

Tears sting Karen’s eyes independent of the pain. This week was just getting better and better – now she was reminding Frank of his family, wasn’t she? Reminding him of simpler times, sweeter things. Days long past to never return.

“You don’t have to stay and keep warning me,” she manages, staring more at the sill than through the windows to the dim alleyway. “I’ll stay careful….Pretty much knocked out of commission right now, anyway.”

Frank lingers at the door. “Ma'am….”

She nods once. “Thanks, Frank.”

The door clicks closed as softly as her voice had been. It’s only after he’s long gone and she’s running her hands through her hair, nails digging into her scalp, that she remembers to ask him how he knew what she was doing in the first place. Karen bites back a frustrated sob.

 

* * *

 

Two days later and she’s turning in a meager piece to Ellison.

“Stop beating yourself up, Page. This is what we’ve got editors for.”

“I know, I just mean it’s not– It’s not much of anything, I guess. I kept hitting dead ends,” Karen admits.

He finishes flipping through the pages in his hands with a shrug. “It’s entertaining enough. Look, they’re not all going to be explosions. This city would actually be the horrible place we like to paint it as for readership if they were.”

The two of them trade a consolatory smile.

“It’s not bad, Page, trust me. I wouldn’t hold back telling you if it was. Now go get started on something else already, okay? Deadline’s Wednesday.”

Karen picks her bag up again, coat never removed from her shoulders, and heads back to the elevator. As soon as she’s walked a block from the front doors, Frank falls into step beside her.

He’s got a black ball-cap on his head just like before but there’s a hoodie pulled over it now, too, casting him as a figure attempting to merge entirely with his own shadow. It’s all too fitting. She raises her eyebrows at the paper cup he’s offering, noting the tag denoting a tea-bag dangling from the lip of the lid.

“What’s this?”

“Chamomile. Supposed to help.”

Frank Castle bought her tea – for her period. Inconvenient heat squeezes her throat as she takes it. “Not fair that you got coffee for yourself, you know,” she says with a nod to his own cup, attempting to make light of this. Pretend it’s nothing meaningful.

His eyes blink down for a couple seconds, almost a hint of humor on his face, before they reach the crosswalk. They stop at the red light. “You don’t have to think about that PI anymore.”

Dread trickles cold down her spine. “What’d you do?”

“He’s alive.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

Frank meets her stare. There’s no remorse to be found, not that she expected any, but there’s something permanent and intent making his eyes flicker.

The dread pooling in her stomach now wants to take his jacket in hand.  She uses all of her willpower to resist caving into that emotional outburst, too.

“…Have a good day, ma'am.”

The light turns green. He’s molding fast into the flow of the oncoming crowd before she can follow, before she can come up with anything to say. Karen almost screams at him then. Screams out his name, makes him stop, makes him get angry or maybe even worry again.

In the end, she groans when she loses sight of his head for good. The sound releases with a pathetic echo buried in the shuffling around her.

 

* * *

 

Running on a steady dosage of ibuprofen and an incredible lack of both sleep and caffeine for five days is enough to make anyone act reckless. The fact that her hormones were running obnoxiously high and teetering on tipping out of control was more than enough of a reason, too. That’s as far as Karen thinks, anyway, as her mind takes hold on the idea.

She doesn’t regret anything. Not the way she parks down the street from the home of the man Frank warned her about before, not the way she counts the hours until pre-dawn, not the way she braves the cold after in a dark corner of Central Park.

The first streaks of light will take a while yet to filter through the thick branches swaying overhead.

She waits.

It can’t be any more than five minutes before his boots scuff along the sidewalk, detouring off a few feet away to crunch leaves before he stops with knees against the other end of the bench. Karen looks at him. “Wasn’t sure it’d work.”

Frank isn’t amused. “What are you doing?”

Sighing, she rolls her shoulders and looks away. Some birds sing in the unseen distance. “How’d you know? …What I was doing and who I was investigating for my story, how did you know? I only told my boss about it which means there’s only two reasons that can come to my mind and I’ve tried to find another, but I can’t. So enlighten me.”

A long pause ends with him letting loose a deep breath. He sits, fingers tapping absently on his thigh. “…How’re you feeling?”

“Tired,” she sighs immediately. Karen reconsiders the question when she glances to him. “But a lot better.”

His eyes hover somewhere over her hands in her lap as the stress lessens ever-so-slightly off of his face.

Rolling her lips then, she settles back against the bench, shifting down a bit. “You have to help me out with this, Frank, because I’m having a really hard time matching the past week up with the typical actions of a dead man.”

He grunts uncomfortably. “That’s what this is about? Look– Our paths are bound to cross. It ain’t anything more than that.”

“You didn’t kill him. Either of them. If they were horrible enough for the Punisher to be looking into them, you would’ve.”

There’s something like a curse muttered underneath his breath. That makes her smile, against all odds, as she watches him stretch out his legs almost unknowingly.

“And you’re here now,” she adds softly.

Frank swallows.

“You’re not actually dead to me….Okay? I know what I said, what you said, but if that’s what made you think you had to put cryptic notes on my car and keep walking away…. Don’t.”

Their stares meet. The intensity almost knocks her over, but Karen’s had enough of her fair share of troubles this past week for his extreme energy to feel like nothing more than slipping on an old glove. She raises her eyebrows imploringly.

“Don’t push me away.”

A crack forms. “I’m a fugitive, ma'am, and you’re– shit, you’re working your way into a fancy journalist’s office.”

“It’s not that fancy.”

Frank smirks in a blink of an eye, so fast she nearly misses it. “Point is, trial’s over. Blacksmith’s dead. I can’t make you an accomplice again– bad enough I did it once before.”

“Not an accomplice,” she corrects. “Just…a friend.”

Skittering gaze searching across her features, he’ll find nothing but genuine hope. She knows the moment it clicks for him, the moment he can’t deny that’s all there is and it makes him unsettled, creases at the edge of his eyes pressing out with something akin to fear. Fear of losing more, or maybe simply of the connection itself.

“At least let me pay you back for that tea. I’m desperate for a cup of coffee right now.”

She smiles again. Frank caves for today and stands, sticking closer to her side after she does, too. “…That was a pretty big gamble, ma'am. Staking out that house in case I was around.”

“Not really. My instincts have gotten me this far.”

He huffs in absence of a laugh.


	20. things you said under the stars and in the grass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ nxtyourfirstrodeo asked: Kastle + 6 (I need fluff please. I had a shit day at work. ILY.) ]
> 
> 6 - things you said under the stars and in the grass

 

She’s sitting on the ground with Max stretched out and pressed to her side when Frank shows up to meet them at the nearly deserted park. He’d picked the spot and, as the lights twinkle behind and across from them on the other side of the lapping river, Karen can’t believe she never bothered to stop here before. 

It’s been a long four years and yet there were still quite a lot of places she had yet to explore within this vast city. Instead of finding time to spend here, she searched sketchy alleyways and corrupt hallways, even in her spare time.

Especially in her spare time.

Except today – because Frank was back from a trip upstate that was less talking and more interrogation oriented.

Max takes off as soon as he sees Frank walking steadily along the riverside towards them, leash trailing behind the pit-bull more sweet and harmless than any dog she’s known. She watches him bowl into his owner, Frank’s arms thrown wide, showering the dog with pats and rubs. It makes her giggle.

The sound must carry enough over the sloshing of the waves, his head tilting up her way briefly before he corrals Max over.

“How’d it go?” She asks, wrapping her arms around her knees.

Max circles them eagerly but quickly lays at their feet when Frank lowers himself to the ground next to her. “Better than expected.”

“Hm.”

“That prosecutor you were looking into – if he’s involved in anything, it’s not this. No one knew of him.”

So maybe he was just a standard asshole, after all. Karen nods. “Thanks.”

Frank nods back before patting the sliver of grass between them. Max shimmies his way up immediately.

She laughs again, affection for the dog the easiest way to make her smile nowadays. The way things went between the two of them, she was closer to being the owner of Max’s second home than she was his permanent babysitter, making room for him in her life every other week. Sometimes sooner. “He really missed you this time.”

“It was too long,” Frank replies with a heavy tone, rubbing the dog’s ears.

Watching them a moment, catching how Max’s eyelids are drooping appreciatively towards sleep and knowing she doesn’t have much else to offer talking about, not anything she wants to talk about right now at least, Karen leans back against the grass. Soft blades tickle the nape of her neck.

Frank’s gaze flickers over to her. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to see the stars.”

He smirks. “Stars, huh? Good luck with that.”

Pale eyes straining against the darkness, she catches a few white dots way up high. Every time, a beat passes before the tell-tale blink of a red or blue light joins in, revealing how mobile and non-cosmic they actually are. “The view was great back in Vermont.” She sighs. “It’s the one thing I miss.”

This time when he glances at her, he lingers. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I remember I was maybe ten and I wanted to learn all the constellations. Couldn’t get past confusing the big dipper and the little dipper, though.”

Frank rests his back next to hers with a grin. “The size difference didn’t tip you off?”

“Well, the thing is, I was never good at really spotting the two dippers so I just… made them out of random stars.”

He chuckles. It’s infectious in its rarity, low and soft, drawing a matching grin to her face with ease. He lifts his hand. “Alright. See where I’m pointing?”

“Really, Frank?”

“You wanna know or not?”

Karen bites back a tease and nods, shifting closer to follow where he’s pointing more easily.

He traces them out for her with how they’d look, how you’d theoretically be able to differentiate them from within Ursa Major, where the North Star usually is this time of year, and she wonders at how his memories can be so fleeting one moment and so strong the next.

She turns her head to look at him. “How do you know all this? Not the North Star–” She can imagine how that came in handy while he was serving. “–but the rest.”

A pause. The backs of their hands brush in the grass. “Frank Jr. loved them too. He wanted to learn, so I thought: I’m not gonna make him figure it out alone. I’m gonna learn and I’m gonna help teach him.”

With a bittersweet smile, she thinks of her own flippant parents before she can stop herself, pushing the thoughts away as soon as they form. She wonders what Frank would be doing right now if that fateful day at the carousel hadn’t happened. She could picture him, picture them, crowded around a telescope in the backyard maybe, Frank patient and happy. “That’s really sweet,” is all she says, the lump of emotions in her throat more obvious to her own ears than she wants it to be.

Frank licks his lips, head shaking slight. “What, uh. What keeps you from going back? Visiting?”

She’d told him about Kevin months ago. Enough time to let her shrug her shoulders wistfully now. “Just doesn’t feel the same. I’ve never had the urge once I left.”

With a barely audible hum of acknowledgment, Frank quiets. They stare up at the blank canvas of a sky until Max wisens up to how they’ve moved in his dozing absence and lifts his head with a whine, crawling up further. He licks Karen’s cheek, draws a squeal of a giggle from her.

“You might have to kidnap him again,” she says after managing to distract Max with a head rub. “He really likes my place.”

“He likes your treats.”

“And me,” she protests easily.

“And you.”

The agreement catches her off guard. Karen looks over, meeting the sincerity in his eyes. “…When do you walk him here?”

“Mornings. Why?”

“Maybe I’ll join you guys sometimes.”

“If I didn’t know better, ma'am, I’d suspect you’re trying to steal Max for yourself.”

“I already know that’s impossible. You two are a package deal.”

Frank laughs.


	21. Frank “World Class Gentleman” Castle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Anonymous asked: Hey could you do a Kastle fluff piece where’s it’s pretty chilly out and Franks a gentleman and gives Karen his coat? ]

“This is a bad idea,” Frank mutters underneath his breath.

“Are you doubting my ability to be charming?” She asks with a hum close to a tease in her tone. As soon as she’s said it, he casts her a sidelong glance, and she knows he hadn’t meant to be heard over the winds.

“Charm’s got nothin’ to do with it.”

Karen taps her fingers along the cold metal railing. “It’ll be fine.”

“…You trust him?” With the question, he turns slight to face her instead of staring out at the water rushing along the side of the ferry.

“Yeah, I do. Brett’s a good guy. He’ll listen.”

He takes in her words with a slow considering nod, eyes cast over her shoulder. Perpetually scanning the rest of the deck when not searching the horizon.

It’s two in the morning and they’re not the only people on the ferry back from Staten Island but, for all intents and purposes, they might as well be. Anyone else of the few dozen aboard are either working or tucked away below deck in their vehicles. It’s blissfully peaceful on the empty overlook as the waves lap in a steady rhythm, breeze whipping in their faces with a refreshing chill easily replacing any need for caffeine. Now she simply misses coffee for its warmth.

With a shiver, Karen tucks her hands away in her pockets.

The city was teetering firmly still between Summer and Autumn, days quickly heated by long rays from the sun and nights cast in chilly shadows from the northern winds. It had seemed to be a good idea at the time, heading out without a jacket, because they weren’t supposed to gone this long. It wasn’t supposed to take all day and them some to stake out one storage unit.

But of course it ultimately had.

Karen couldn’t manage to feel put out, though, because while working together like this rarely turned out pleasant considering what trouble it took to attract Frank’s attention, there were always exceptions. Exceptions such as today where it was, strangely enough, entirely calm. Almost fun enough for Karen to close her eyes and believe she was just spending time with another friend on a day off, sharing coffee and sandwiches and snippets of conversation as they caught up on each other’s lives and thoughts.

She could pretend they weren’t on a stake-out watching an asshole she was going to make sure got indicted for corruption.

They’d made a deal, the two of them: she gives the police enough information to decide on pursuing it and Frank gives them a set number of days to follow through. If they don’t, well, he takes over. The Punisher takes over.

He’d asked her before, the first time they came to this agreement, why it all didn’t bother her as much as it did everyone else. As much as he thought it should after everything he knew of putting her through himself. What a lengthy night of confessions that had become.

Karen shivers again as she puts her back to the gusts that waft over the railing. She can look at Frank straight-on this way, running her eyes over him, ignoring the way the cold metal radiates easily through her sweater and shocks her skin. His shoulders are taut, mouth pulled more towards a frown than a flat line. He’s worried.

“Frank.”

“Ma'am.”

“What is it?” She has a fairly good idea about that, actually, but doesn’t want to presume which part of it all is clouding his thoughts with unease.

Sliding his forearms forward along the railing until his elbows knock against the lip of them, the space between them closes unnecessarily against prying ears. Even in the darkness, she can see the shades of brown flecked in his irises as his gaze settles on her, and she resists the urge to swallow. “If it’s not enough, again, if they don’t follow up and I gotta do what I do…. You’re exposing yourself. It’s too much of a risk this way.”

“He won’t prioritize a shot at the Punisher over taking a corrupt piece of shit off the streets.”

“Another shot,” Frank corrects.

Her lips curve. “He’s a good cop. It’ll work.”

“Good ain’t what I’m worried about. Any idiot will be able to connect the dots.” His troubled eyes rake over her face, the wisps of her hair dancing around her face. “You’ve lied about about our run-ins enough.”

One of her hands rests on his arm. “Frank,” she sighs, tilting her head. “Trust my gut, okay?”

“…You’re shaking.”

Karen almost hadn’t realized. She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, this sweater’s not cutting it; but I’m fine. What is it, ten more minutes before we dock? The cold won’t kill me.”

It’s meant as a joke, but his other hand picks hers up, rough fingers squeezing where he finds her thin ones more resembling icicles. Somehow, he’s warm yet, and she wishes he hadn’t reached out because, as soon as he lets go, a renewed tremble from the cold rolls down her spine. Frank pulls his arms off the railing.

She watches him shrug out of his jacket, shakes her head. “I’m fine.”

“And I’m no fugitive.”

One her brows ticks up at his retort. Frank just cups a hand around her shoulder and gently nudges her from the railing.

His jacket slips over her shoulders, a thick and heavy cocoon, before he’s fussing with the collar, trying to settle it firmly up around her neck as much as possible. She doesn’t attempt to fold her arms into it but instead keeps it pulled closed from where her hands rest pulled up against her chest. Heat flows around her easily, raising a flush up along her cheeks against the gusting chill in the air.

“I can only smell coffee and gunpowder – and I think some wet dog.”

Frank smirks and takes hold of her hand again from where her fingertips curl over the flap into sight, assessing her lack of tremors. “Better?”

“Better,” she says softly.

He only shifts his grip to grasp her fingers more firmly. “I always trust you. Just don’t want you getting in trouble I can’t help get you out of.”

“I know.” Karen smiles. After a moment, he returns it, concern lingering nevertheless behind his eyes.

The ferry docks fifteen minutes later and, instead of splitting ways as they’d planned, their feet carry them without any discussion had to a 24/7 diner. When she settles into the booth across from him, his jacket remains securely on her shoulder. Frank doesn’t ask for it back.


	22. accidental kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [ Anonymous asked: I have a little idea that I would seriously love you forever if you'd be willing to write it. I can't get the idea of an "accidental kiss" out of my mind. Most likely being initiated by Karen who promptly turns/runs off b/c she can't believe she kissed Frank paired w/ her having been afraid to stay & see his reaction considering the circumstances. Then for the next however many days she's the one doing whatever to avoid him until he finally seeks her out & eases her mind about it in some way. ]

Two fingers curling loose around the sash of her trench-coat is all Frank manages before she jolts away.

The transition was all too natural, all too innocent. One moment, Karen is wrapping her free arm around him in semblance of a bittersweet hug, an assurance somewhere there more for herself than him that he’d kept his word and returned in a more or less solid piece after a couple weeks off the grid, and then in the next second she’s turning her head as she leans back, doing something she’s never attempted before – kissing his cheek.

It’s the last thing he expects when he turns his own head to meet her eyes.

Their lips brush.

She’s soft, he thinks, and Frank could laugh cruelly at his own idiotic mind if that knowledge wasn’t echoing so guiltily between his ears. She’s a contradiction of strength and weakness, hard edges and gentle curves, but she’s always soft with him, shining and considerate and all too understanding of everything he does and says when she turns those bright blue eyes on him. He’d only ever willingly let her be the one to kick his ass, though she never does. Never even tries.

Her mouth slides over his with the same soothing warmth he finds readily within the rest of her presence.

And yet – it shocks him still.

They shouldn’t. It was only an accident.

One of them has to separate first. She had to know why he couldn’t.

His eyelids slip closed a few seconds after, more deliberate than her instinctual reaction as he stands stoic as a statue. Hesitant, she presses close with a feather-light touch.

It’s nothing, barely a kiss at all, but it’s overwhelmingly tempting, alighting a battle within of shame and hunger. He wants more; he can’t do this. He wants to pull her close; he should be as good as dead. He wants to lose himself with her; he’s supposed to be lost to the world already.

Karen opens her mouth slightly against his, a quiet gasp of a breath. His fingers twitch and start to reach out with independent will.

The cloth whips away from him before he can grip it, her heels skidding loudly against concrete as she all but throws herself back, stumbling away from him. She holds her hands up in apology with regret stricken across her face. Frank’s caught as numb and immobile as ever, struggling to clear his conscience let alone have the presence of mind to do anything. Say anything.

Whatever she sees in his gaze makes hers fall quickly to his chest, denying him the chance to search it. “I…. That….”

Her voice dies underneath uneven breaths.

He struggles with finding his own locked behind a clenched jaw long after Karen gives up on her uncooperative tongue and flees across the street, disappearing into the night. Frank watches her go with feet unwilling to follow.

 

* * *

 

They’d be meeting in the diner three blocks over by now, sipping coffee and discussing strategy, trading fond barbs and curious queries about each other’s latest work in absence of the other. That was the normal routine – if she hadn’t ruined everything. If she hadn’t kissed him.

Karen holes up at the Bulletin without an ounce of productivity flowing through her veins as she stares neglectfully at the screen in front of her, worrying her lip hard enough to cause a split along the skin. She winces for a moment but continues biting into herself. The tingle of pain is a welcome competing distraction against the panic turning her blearily light-headed.

She hadn’t meant to do it – but that small fact didn’t mean much of anything, did it?

The hug wasn’t entirely uncommon for them after all this time. Frank had been stiff, just as always, but she caught the subtle lift at the corner of his lips before pulling him close. It’d only turned her relief into something heady. What happened after was a foolish impulse, at first.

Until she’d pushed the boundaries because of a heat flaring around her heart and tried to explore it, explore them.

His stubble tickled along her skin, barely reaching her as she tilted against him and tested the waters. Pulling away meant she had to speak, meant she couldn’t lie about thinking of them in this way more than a few times lately in the deepest recesses of night, meant opening and closing a chapter of something more with barely a minute’s worth of effort.

Karen took the biggest risk of a leap in her life and waited.

Frank rejected her with a rigid frame and flat touch.

Her teeth catch on a particularly deep edge of exposed nerves, jarring her out of the memory as she tastes blood. Flinching, she lets go of her lip and her shoulders sag as she buries her head in her hands, fingernails scraping along scalp. Another weak attempt at self-punishment.

They’d be meeting in the diner three blocks over by now but she doesn’t dare leave the Bulletin until half a day’s gone by and the sun’s hanging low in the sky. She goes out of her way to avoid passing by it on her way home, just in case.

Karen couldn’t take watching that anguish wash across his face again. Not when she knew it was caused by her and her alone.

 

* * *

 

Frank lies low.

He walks Max in the safety of twilight with hood up, restocks his safe houses methodically, throws some different names and leads to Micro as they start building another case of judgment against another deserving soul. Logistically, he has to make use of the downtime and put the skull away for a short while – it was barely a day after he met up with Karen that his latest massacre was plastered all over the news, sirens parading through the streets as they look for any sign of him.

But logistics can’t account for him passing by her apartment every night.

He’d be knocking on her door or window right now, getting himself invited in with a light remark about forgoing stalking the city’s criminal underbelly tonight before one of them put a pot of coffee on. It was terribly close to being a faithful affirmation for her that he was here, he was still breathing. Karen needed that, he knew – and maybe he needed to give her that, too.

Maybe it was itching along his spine, again, trying to drag him from his perch as he saw her disappear behind thick blinds she only just seemed to realize were open to the shadowed city. Frank sighs instead and drags his tapping fingers from the rooftop’s half-wall.

She hadn’t showed at the diner or the bench or the park. She hadn’t dared to text or call the number he’d started to keep just for her. All these hints at a touch, all these fixed points mapped across the city as a way of finding the other when the need, or simply the want, arose – he had started these for her sake. That’s what he’d thought.

Except that longing was ripping its way through his rib-cage with each day stealing by without word.

He was losing her. And it terrified him.

Frank stops attempting to sort through his chaotic mess of a mind and organize this new war bursting against his nerves, stops trying to formulate coherent thoughts rationalizing what couldn’t be fit into a pretty box with a neat bow and shoved far away into dark recesses – he just picks up the phone and starts typing out an invitation. Karen doesn’t respond.

The next morning, he shows up anyway.

She never arrives.

 

* * *

 

‘We should talk. Meet at the water?’

Two days old and she was still picking up her phone, staring absently at the text. It kept her heart in her throat but this steady background thrum of panic that had taken hold of her for a week now wasn’t an entirely abnormal experience for the past several years of her life. Karen was starting to get used to it.

She should’ve responded. Ignoring it was harsh, cold, a brutal refusal that went far beyond their most heated arguments.

What was she supposed to do, though? Step in front of him one more time for a second rejection, hearing the words of grief and a final goodbye spill from his lips? Severing ties this way was hard enough – even Ellison had noticed, asking after her well-being when he noticed her stare turn vacant.

Trish at least doesn’t mention it beyond giving a knowing look with a casual offer to meet for drinks that evening. Not a fiber of her being is in the mood for drinks with company, but Karen accepts anyway, voice at the back of her head reminding her that she was only feeding the depressive loneliness within otherwise. Trish smiles bright. She pulls her phone from her pocket after the elevator doors close and stares at those seven innocent words, again.

“Ma'am.”

Karen halts mid-step around the pillar in the parking garage.

Leaning against her car, hands tucked away loosely into the pockets of his jacket, Frank locks onto her gaze. The air of calm he’s going for is completely ruined by the worry stretching across his face. Tension causes a muscle to jump along his jawline.

“Frank,” she greets slowly. The awkward pull in the air is unbearably stifling but she forces herself to close the distance until there’s a mere two feet of distance between them, conversation as hidden as it can be against any prying ears among the echoing concrete.

“Nice show. You sounded good.”

“Thanks.”

They stare at each other for a long moment, falling easily into savoring a quiet contentment that almost relaxes her taut shoulders before she’s remember, clearing her throat and flickering her eyes away. “Ma'am–”

“Can we not? Do this?” Tilting her head, she keeps to studying his throat. She catches his Adam’s apple bob then. “You don’t have to explain, Frank, just…. Don’t make me have to heard it out loud.”

His hands brace against the car doors behind him. “…What do you think I’m here to say?”

He’s squinting at her, searching again – Karen doesn’t have to raise her eyes to know that. She sighs. “Look, I know it was a mistake–”

Reaching out, Frank’s fingers tug on the edge of her coat. She takes half a step forward without thinking, words cut-off and stuck heavily on her tongue at the motion as she can’t help snapping her head up to match his stare. Everything is laid bare for her to see – grief, fear, desire. Her eyes widen. “Is that what you want? Call it a mistake?”

An exhale, and all the stress releases from her muscles. “No.”

He’s cupping her cheek with his other hand and standing straight to close the distance within the blink of an eye. Karen barely has a chance to clutch at his jacket before his lips are on hers, demanding and ravenous and oh so intoxicating. With the swipe of a tongue, their mouths open and she moans, snaking an arm around his neck as his at her waist slips underneath the coat, pressing firmly at her back to haul her closer.

Gone was the composed man of a week ago as she clings to him, prompts a grunt from him as her hand fists in his hair, keeping pace effortlessly as months and months of yearning flows freely between them.

Gradually, his mouth turns to the corner of hers and they just barely separate enough to breathe. Karen swipes her thumb over the jumping pulse-point at his jugular faintly.

“I was terrified I was gonna lose you,” she confesses.

“Me too.”

She almost laughs in relief. Frank caresses her cheek, a fond glint to his eye she thinks she recognizes all too well now. “Whatever happens… I’m not leaving you. Not until you ask me to, understand?”

“You’re going to be waiting a long time to hear that.”

His only response is to kiss her again.


	23. first meeting in The Punisher (bench)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ porgs-r-us asked: Hi! I wonder whether you could write your take on what Karen and Frank's first interaction could be when they meet on the Punisher? Maybe using set photos or paparazzi photos? Thank you and I hope you have a fantastic day! (Love your writing btw) PS. Go as angsty as you'd like :) ]

He walks up surprisingly quiet.

Either that, or she’s more lost in her own head than she thought as she sits on the edge of the bench, arms folded and leaning against her crossed legs in the ultimate portrait of a defensive recluse as she wracks her brain for why now, why here. The ‘here’ question is at least one she can easily deduce with one sweep of a gaze when she’d arrived. This portion of the crumbling docks no one batted an eye towards was eerily close to the stretch Ben had invited her out to a few times, situated between large docks and shipping warehouses along the river.

The faint familiarity only makes her more agitated. Karen regrets her fifth cup of coffee, now.

“Ma'am,” he calls from her left. It’s gruff but not unkind.

Karen jumps anyway.

When she turns her head, Frank’s stopped only a foot from the other end of the bench, and there’s scarcely enough room between them for her to not hear his breathing. Her eyes travel over him unwittingly.

Thick boots, wrinkled jeans, black jacket, white shirt – the last strikes a question through her quick as lightning, kept at bay by pressed lips. ‘But what about the blood stains?’

That wasn’t a rightful question, though, and she had a lot of questions but she at least knew the truth there. The Punisher had fallen eerily silent after saving Daredevil last November. She’d worried then, desperate for some word of him to know how he was doing. Know that he was okay. He could say he was a dead man all he wanted but a dead man didn’t go out of his way to save the beloved hero of Hell’s Kitchen. A dead man didn’t get back up again enough to load a new rifle and spray-paint a new shirt with a symbol people were meant to remember.

A dead man didn’t slip a letter and phone number into her mail at the Bulletin and arrange to meet.

Stuffing his hands into his jacket, he takes half a step to face her fully. Karen rests a hand on the bench, turning partially towards him out of almost a reflexive instinct before stopping herself. She keeps her gaze fixed level with the horizon still and waits. For what, she can’t be sure – doesn’t have the slightest idea of what to predict anymore, what to want or fear from him, if she’s capable of harboring any fear for anything he says or does without it immediately melting into concern.

“Didn’t know if you’d show.”

Karen scoffs with a smile lacking warmth. “Yes, you did, or you wouldn’t have reached out. And why did you?”

“You mad I’m here?”

A deflection – or maybe he’s digging, seeing if she’d be open enough to whatever he’s gone through all this trouble to talk to her about. The very thought of him doing the later makes her fold her arms and press against the back of the bench. “You think I have just one reason to be mad at you?”

“Fair enough,” he mutters underneath his breath after a moment, words grumbled nearly unintelligibly if the wind hadn’t caught on them for her.

She resists the urge to shift uncomfortably. “I’m here so you might as well sit and let me hear you out.”

As soon as he’s well and truly beside her, hands folded together in constant motion in front of him from where he’s spread out and hunched slight, looking far too casual against her uptight frame, Karen can feel the heat radiating off of him. It’s slow but steady.

It reminds her of the diner when their hands had been clasped around individual mugs of coffee, shoulders bowed across the table towards each other, discussion snapping easily between teasing and intense before she’d known the role he had her there to play. Before she’d known she was a piece of bait.

Her eyes snap to Frank then, finally searching his face as he stares unseeingly into the distance, thumb rubbing palm absently as if he’s lost on how to begin. She thinks maybe he is as it’s all she can find in the lines scrunching up his forehead, frown tugging down at his lips, and darkness drowning out his irises. He’s bothered by something.

Karen tucks her head down to her chest as soon as his mouth opens and she gets her answer.

The FBI, CIA, Homeland Security – everyone was after him. Not necessarily a shock, but her brain pings on that information with the same ringing in her ears that she gets every time she stumbles into a new story. It’s just the tip of the iceberg, what he’s being all vague about as he warns her against talking to any agents that might pass her way because they were looking for him, investigating his story from the beginning, and that included her.

A disbelieving sigh escapes her throat.

“You stick to whatever you told the police back then and they won’t bother you for long.”

“I thought you were dead,” she blurts with a touch of frustration. “When you burnt your house down – or blew it up, with all that gasoline you tossed into it. Jesus, Frank. Why?”

He throws his head back. “And what’s that gotta do with this?”

“Just tell me why you did it.” Uncrossing her legs, Karen curves forward again with elbows on her thighs, talking to the water instead of the man turning to give her all of his attention now. “Why did you show up on that rooftop after shooting Schoonover – why did you put that skull on your chest?”

“Ma'am–”

“And for what? Get everyone’s attention as you torch your house and disappear?”

“I don’t give a shit what anyone else thinks about what I do and sure as hell don’t want their attention.” Frank stops short of yelling, hands opening and closing and folding over one another erratically, betraying his unease.

“Yeah, you’re doing a great job accomplishing that.” Digging in her bag, Karen finds the email she’d printed out from Foggy. She holds the paper out to him without anything more than a glance at his bruise-free knuckles as he cautiously slips it from her. Her hands clasp together tightly as soon as it’s gone. “Foggy already got a request from Homeland yesterday for everything from your trial. Well, Nelson and Murdock did, but since it closed and–”

And Matt died.

The words sit heavily on her tongue, tasting bitter. Karen shakes her head once. “Since Foggy has executive decision and is happily willing to say your attorney-client privileges ended after the trial, he’s handing it all over. Not that he has a lot of choice. They threaten some seizure loophole bullshit in there by saying you’re a threat to national security.”

Frank stares at the page for a long minute. “…I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.” With a passing wind tugging on some loose strands around her face, Karen can feel down to the marrow of her bones how tired she really is. She’s been tired since Matt showed up in her office at the Bulletin in the middle of the night asking her to stay safely at the precinct. Tired of those tip-toeing around her, tired of the secrets lumping beneath her rib-cage, tired of feeling guilty every time she tries to resume a life more befitting a normal and innocent person.

Odd, how she felt more safe right now, all the while desperation of a mess too jumbled to decipher rumbles through her veins.

“No,” Frank just exhales with a tinge of resignation. “For all of this, dragging you into this mess– yes. But I’m talking about Murdock….I’m sorry.”

She sighs and tilts her head slightly, senses intimately how he’s hunched further right alongside her and staring, unwavering. If he’s thinking now what he thought months back as they sat across one another in that diner, he was wrong. But she wasn’t willing to risk tainting the sudden calm by correcting him. “What are you going to do now?”

“Don’t know,” he says low. It sounds like a confession.

With the anger drained away, a momentarily bright flame snuffed out by soft winds, Karen licks her lips and asks the one question she’s wanted a chance to voice since seeing the black and white print of an ashen wreckage. “Do you regret burning it all?”

“…Nothing to go back to.”

“That’s not an answer,” she points out.

“No, guess it isn’t.” Frank’s head dips away from hers. She doubts he even has that answer for himself and, as she considers that, her shoulders sag. The paper flutters in his grip. “Can I keep this?”

“Copy’s just for you.”

Folding it promptly, he tucks it inside his jacket. “Thank you, ma'am.”

A lingering moment more and then he stands.

Karen bolts up. “Wait.”

Strides long, he’s already around the side of the bench by then, twisting sideways to look back at her across the few feet of distance. Karen locks eyes with him for the first time in months.

He’s so incredibly easy to read, and she’d managed to forget that, managed to block it out of her mind because remembering him and them left her feeling more forlorn than not, but it’s impossible to ignore now as his brows lower in unspoken curiosity while wary anticipation bleeds from his stare. She almost forgets what she’d meant to say. “Keep that number.”

Frank squints, blinking rapidly with hands buried once more.

“When they show up, I’ll call you.”

“Ma'am, don’t. That’s a bad idea.”

“Maybe. But you want to know what questions they ask me or not?”

He pauses.

Karen braces her hands on her hips. “Just… keep the number.”

“Be careful, ma'am,” he relents, worry and guilt awash in his eyes with full force.

“You too, Frank.”


	24. kastle: [softly]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Anonymous asked: I really want/need to read something where someone brings up the fact that Frank's voice goes softer when he talks to or about Karen and Karen insists it is not true, but then she's super aware of his voice when he talks from then on and ends up realizing it to be true for herself. I'd be beyond thankful if you'd write something like that! ]

**i. before**

 

* * *

 

“You sure he was fine?”

She’s handing Foggy the yellow pad of questions back, already messy pages now wrecked by her own lengthy additions after nearly two hours sitting in the same prison visitation room again. Karen levels an exasperatedly fond look at her friend. “I wouldn’t go alone if he wasn’t.”

“I know, I just keep expecting him to snap or something. The only one he doesn’t growl at is you – which, hey, it’s great he’s not threatening to blow off our heads or anything, but he’s a lunatic. I don’t want you to get comfortable.”

Though her instincts make her bristle, Karen covers it with a shrug and quick smile.

Neither he nor Matt knew that most of the time during her visits was spent diving into the mystery around his family’s death, the carousel, the cover-up. The angles they were investigating weren’t exactly relevant to his trial – it wasn’t anything they could bring up in court yet, not with how little and circumstantial everything they had was, which Matt reminded her of whenever she mentioned it – so she stays mum. Keeps their secret almost-partnership close to her chest, instead.

“He complimented your opening statement,” Karen points out.

“Was that supposed to be a compliment? I think he called it ‘shit’.”

“'Bullshit’, actually, but so did you afterwards when you stopped sweating.”

“Touché.” Foggy shakes his head.

“Look. If it makes you feel better, he’s always chained down,” she manages.

“It doesn’t, but thanks.”

 

* * *

 

Frank’s coiled tense as he sits next to her, barely keeping himself restrained to tapping his fingers erratically. He directs his stare to the opposite wall of the courtroom as Reyes viciously interrogates the officer from the hospital. The officer he knocked out the night he came after Grotto – and, by extension, her. Except, not really.

Fearful is how she should have felt still, or at the very least anxious, and she’s all too aware of that, but the only urge Karen has is the want to put a calming hand on his arm. She resists by only curving slightly towards him. “You okay?”

“She’s goddamn relentless,” he growls low in response to her whisper.

Foggy stands then to object. The judge grants it, making Reyes reign herself in unhappily.

“She’s reckless,” Karen corrects as she tries not to smile.

“…I didn’t hurt him, I disarmed him. Dumped that gun he didn’t know shit about holding correctly in the trash. If I wanted to hurt him, really hurt him, then I would’ve, I could’ve. But I didn’t. And she’s up there, spewing that…. What a fuckin’….” Frank mumbles incoherently underneath his breath, shaking his head with eyes cast down.

“Hey. I know.”

He stills.

“And Foggy’s going to bring that up as soon as she’s done. Okay?”

With a sideways glance, she thinks she spies some appreciation there. He nods and turns his eyes away to the table.

Foggy bumps her elbow a minute later, pen tapping on his notepad next to a fast scribble.

‘Keep him calm like that. The jury notices him get antsy.’

Uncomfortably reminded of the hundred or so other watchful stares in the room at that moment, Karen rolls her shoulders and fixes herself back into a picture of poise.

 

* * *

 

“Do it.”

“Okay. Okay… Hey.”

The pistol feels needlessly heavy in her grip as her gut begs her to trust Frank, unwanted gasp slipping past her lips.

And then all hell breaks loose.

Later, after he’s tackled her and covered every inch of her curled-up body, after he’s cradling her head with his hands and presses desperate attempts at soothing shushes against the shell of her ear, after he helps her up and follows her out down the hallway to an alcove on the other side of the elevators, Karen sags against the wall and stares at him.

“It wasn’t me,” he says again. His voice is impossibly light as he tries to speak soft.

A momentary wisp of a laugh bursts from her at how unnecessary the denial is, more of a hysterical reaction to nerves and a release of adrenaline than anything remotely resembling humor. Karen pushes her hair behind her ears harshly. “How’d you know?”

“Had a feeling,” he says simply. “…And you said you’d help me find answers, before. That offer still stand, ma'am?”

“…You found something. That’s why you went to prison, isn’t it?”

Frank nods.

She listens to her gut. “Yeah…. Yeah, I’ll help.”

 

* * *

 

**ii. during**

 

* * *

 

“Who’s ‘Coffee’?” Foggy asks, her phone’s call screen glowing obnoxiously at her when she spins around.

She crosses her apartment in fast strides. “It’s no one; give it.”

Brows furrow, she’s glad that he at least hasn’t taken it upon himself and cross the line of personal space that is accepting the call himself, but maybe Frank hearing his voice and hanging up abruptly would be a better distraction than the way he’s running his eyes over her now, concern all too evident. Warily, he hands it over.

Karen answers it immediately, walking back to the kitchen. There’s little privacy in her open apartment but the distance is something. And she knows he’ll just start lighting up her phone with even more suspicious texts Foggy would be able to read off the screen if she ignores him. “Hey.”

“Hey…. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re tense.”

“You can’t know that over the phone,” she huffs.

“It’s in your voice,” he says gently. “…Anything I need to know 'bout?”

“…I’ll tell you later.” Frank doesn’t say anything, but she imagines he nods. He doesn’t push, doesn’t keep questioning, hasn’t tried that once since reaching out to her from thin air two months ago with the same haunted eyes above an unruly beard. She clears her throat, aware that Foggy’s not moving much behind her. Trying to listen in then. “Why the call?”

“You free tonight?”

In a different life, with different men asking, those words had hinted at intimate encounters and warm company. She supposes they still did, in their own unique way. “Yeah. I’ll text you later.”

“Stay safe.”

“You too,” she responds just as quietly before hanging up.

Foggy’s leaned against the counter behind her when she turns back. “Who was that?”

“A source for something.” He gives her a disbelieving look but Karen sets the device aside, rolling her lips. “You know I can’t talk about my sources like you can’t talk about your clients. It’s nothing, really.”

With a sigh, he shrugs. “Okay. Yeah, okay, forget I asked.”

 

* * *

 

“This is not nothing!” Foggy hisses at her two weeks later.

“Can we talk about that later?!”

Another beam falls from the ceiling now blown apart into the next floor of the office building.

Karen grabs his arm as they bolt away towards the stairs, plaster swirling through the air into their lungs, someone screaming from down the hall for everyone to get out. They follow a pack of a dozen panicked workers out the formerly luxurious front doors before she’s taking a hard right away from the arriving emergency responders. Foggy continues rambling out questions and curses in-between swiping debris off his face until they’re at the edge of an alleyway a street over.

In an instant, Frank’s moving away from the van he’d kept watch from, terror in his eyes as he takes hold of her arms. “You okay?”

She shakes her head. “It’s just surface. We’re fine. I think it happened in an empty conference room, a distraction or something– fuck, Frank, they set off a bomb!”

“Should'a seen this coming,” he frowns, eyes skittering over her every few seconds to the disastrous scene playing out beyond.

Despite her assurances, his thumb swipes at a droplet of blood around a shallow cut from flying shrapnel that whizzed past her cheek, and Foggy coughs loudly. “So you’re not just helping him, you’re working together. Fantastic.”

“It’s more complicated than that–”

He raises his eyebrows as she faces him. “Really? Because from here it’s pretty obvious that you’re going places Mr. Wanted over there can’t and bringing God knows what back so he can continue on his murder crusade!”

“You don’t know shit, Nelson,” Frank growls.

Foggy steps back and holds his hands up.

“Frank.” With a glance, his taut shoulders shudder. She sighs over at her friend. “I’ll explain what I can, alright. Let’s just get out of here.”

Despite possessing the face of a man that would rather be anywhere else, Foggy lets out a frustrated breath and nods, throwing his hands back down to his sides. “Yeah, okay, sure. But this better be good.”

 

* * *

 

Foggy sits on the sofa of her apartment for a long time after she’s exhaustively answered all of his questions – at least, the ones she can, continually glancing to Frank as he goes between pacing, messaging with Micro, and dressing the few scratches littered across her arms. Foggy stares at the two of them with a narrowed gaze as soon as Frank’s fetched the first aid kit without asking. She ignores him.

“I gotta go,” Frank tells her after silence consumes the small space.

Her lips quirk. “Yeah, I figured. Stay safe.”

“You too.”

A more genuine smile flares up fleetingly at the habitual parting. There’s a glint in his eye, something apologetic, but he doesn’t voice it, keeping it to a lingering nod before he pulls the door shut behind himself. She hears his boots echoing away only after she’s enabled the locks.

“You care about each other.”

Karen blinks at Foggy. “What? Yeah, of course, we’re trying to find everyone responsible for his family–”

“Not that.” He slumps back in the chair, troubled. “He knows the ins and outs of your apartment, he couldn’t stop twitching until you let him bandage you up. It’s not just working together.”

Indignant and more than a little uncomfortable at this unexpected turn in the conversation, she props her hands on her hips. “Would you prefer he not give a shit about my well-being?”

“Yes, because then you wouldn’t be helping him! Instead, you get tunnel-vision with each other and whisper like– like– like you love each other!”

“That’s insane!”

“Is it?!”

Karen just stares at him as she tries not to stumble.

 

* * *

 

**iii. after**

 

* * *

 

The air is crisp as the darkness of night settles around them, their hidden corner only faintly interrupted by a burnt out streetlamp unwilling to accept its death. The flickering light should feel ominous, but she’s known her fair share of real monsters in the shadows, confronted more than a few on her own, and none of them came with helpful foreshadowing that existed within the confines of horror movies. Karen peers discretely over at Frank.

The notion of love was ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.

And impossible.

Frank had lost his family in the most cruel and unforgettable of ways. Karen had given up that idealized dream permanently after finding a strange woman in Matt’s bed. Love was past either of them.

And yet, Foggy’s reasons for that conclusion continue running on loop at the back of her brain.

Frank’s eyelids lower as he turns his gaze from the far-off buildings to the choppy water barely beyond the railing. “What’s wrong?” The words are soft, and she’d give anything not to suddenly start noticing that the way she is.

“Just… thinking.”

“Can I ask?”

Shivering with a deep breath, she turns to lean her back against the railing, preferring to stare into the shadowed abyss of the trees lining the park’s paved path ahead. “It’s just something Foggy said. I can’t get it out of my head.”

“He’s mad 'cause he’s worried about you.”

That part she knew. But being paranoid didn’t always mean the conclusions were wrong. “…What happens after this?”

Frank meets her renewed stare hesitantly. “Which part?”

“All of it. You. Us.”

He simply flickers his eyes between hers, seeking something she doesn’t have the answers for, either. “Haven’t thought that far ahead,” he admits.

Karen takes that in with a slow nod. When she shifts closer along the railing, escaping the cold cocooning them into their own bubble, Frank simply leans closer reflexively.

“What are you hoping for?” His voice catches on the words, guarded. Expecting ultimatums again, maybe, or requesting him to make a promise to stay alive that she knows he can’t.

“I don’t know.”

 

* * *

 

A knock sounds loudly on the doorframe.

Karen hurriedly tries to straighten her desk as Foggy walks into her office. “Busy?”

“Ah, not really,” she confesses, failing to cover up the exhaustive spread of notes, photographs, and files across her desk by the time he’s taking up one of the seats in front of her. The text document on her computer sits eerily empty of a story as she consumes herself going over everything she had from working with Frank. Again.

It’s been a week. This was starting to become a poor habit.

“You okay?”

“No. But you already knew that from how professional I look right now,” she responds wryly.

Foggy smirks before leveling her with a serious gaze. “Listen, I’m sorry about… everything, I guess. About Frank. I wasn’t his biggest fan, you know that, but I am sorry.”

“He’s not dead. He’s just gone.”

“Karen–”

She shakes her head. “I know how that sounds, especially after Matt just last Spring, okay, I know, but it’s the truth. He– he sent me a message.”

Foggy leans forward. “When?”

“Before he burned everything to the ground. It was like a goodbye but… it wasn’t. I mean it,” Karen insists firmly at his dubious look.

She doesn’t know how to make him understand. The words were there, in a dreadfully obvious sort of way, but she’d heard him talk of being a dead man before, and this– this was not that. It was far from it with a voice pitched gentle and tentative. “Stay safe,” he’d finally said after a minute of dead air. Every time she replayed it, Karen found herself whispering the other half.

Frank wouldn’t do that to her. His intentions would be clearer than this.

Regret claws apart her chest once again, hard and fast as grief threatens to spring tears into her eyes, but she pushes it all firmly back to present at least a partially-solid front to Foggy. “He’ll show back up.”

“And if he doesn’t,” Foggy says gingerly, “he got what he wanted. Right?”

Karen doesn’t know how to deny that without lying. Her lips press into a thin line.

 

* * *

 

She could tackle him.

What she does is deliver a hard slap against his chest.

“I deserve that,” Frank replies with a grunt.

“What the hell happened?!”

“Had to tie up some loose ends after–” he starts to explain, Adam’s apple bobbing as his eyes doesn’t quite meet hers, wayward enough for her to notice the split brow, double black eyes, and that he shuffled half a step back at her hit. He’s bandaged, but the damage is there nonetheless.

Karen wraps her arms completely around him this time.

She buries her head into his shoulder, exhaling deeply as the heavy weight of despair slides from her back. “Your voicemail was shit.”

Frank chuckles as his hands find themselves resting along her spine with a weightless touch. “Sorry. Didn’t know what to say.”

Ash and coffee radiate faintly from his shirt. Afraid to pull away just yet, she confesses into the black fabric. “I missed you.” She won’t tell him that she knew he’d be back, that she’d been counting the days – twenty, exactly – until then, or that she listened to that last message every morning and night. The desperation in those actions easily comes through in her voice, anyway.

“Me too,” he replies softly, hands gripping more securely at her sides as his head falls to rest against hers. She smiles small.

Love in the traditional sense of innocent kisses and date nights and planning futures was ridiculous, impossible. It was far past both of them. But neither of them applied to any traditional standards anymore, Karen decides, so she stops thinking about Foggy’s accusation and simply accepts it.

They stand within each other’s reassuring embrace by the windows of her apartment and it’s perfectly enough.


	25. Jealous!Karen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ prompted by frankxkaren ]

The man in front of her is talking a mile a minute, but Karen doesn’t hear him.

She should be paying attention – he was only the whole reason for her being here. A corporate intern she’s schmoozing with after a happenstance meeting less fated and more planned than he knew. It’s all too easy, dissecting him for information on the company’s confidential operations, the subtle and harmless approach she brought to the table when working with Frank.

The danger here was practically nonexistent, but he’d insisted on trailing her anyway.

Fat lot of good that was doing right now with him more distracted than not, sitting at the bar with another woman. Thirty minutes of the woman most definitely plastered out of her mind fawning over him and Frank still hasn’t done anything to extricate himself.

This wasn’t the first time someone approached him during one of their stakeouts or investigations when, for that brief moment in time, he wasn’t littered with scratches or discolored by bruising. However, the turn of a flat glare or brushing off their touch without a word was usually enough for them to catch the hint.

Not this time. This woman persisted.

Auburn hair, mid-thirties, Karen is fair enough to recognize that the giggly drunk was probably a pleasant person sober, which only serves to make it all the more confusing why she’s decided to fixate on him of all people after pounding back four obnoxiously colorful cocktails. The fact that Karen knows the number of drinks it’s been stands as a testament to how she keeps managing to feign enough interest to the intern in front of her without him noticing just how distracted she really is.

If she’s honest, the woman’s bids at latching onto Frank aren’t all that strange. Or unexpected.

He cleans up well, wears an aura of unbothered confidence in public that always helps boost her own, and, when he’s attempting to blend, can appear quite approachable to the female eye.

Not that she thought about that much, or about him in that way, either. Because that’s beyond foolish.

The woman starts talking again, leaning in close, and she knocks against him for an apologetic moment with a hand on his arm. Frank actually talks back. Nicely.

Grip tightening on her whiskey glass, Karen turns a wide grin towards the intern and mimics the arm touch with her own before she realizes what she’s doing. He’s talking about company retreats and she tunes in just quick enough when he starts asking his own questions about her job. The wealth of information she thought they might find here is disappointingly shallow. It’s mundane, everything he has to offer, and she’s already sped through her long list of questioning in under an hour.

Now was when she would shift the conversation towards a disconnect.

She gets up to buy another round, instead.

Frank’s new companion has pried herself away long enough to make a phone call, propping against the wall by the restroom and looking as though she’s barely maintaining balance on those obnoxiously high heels. Karen feels a burst of sympathy for her. Waiting on the bartender to finish with another patron, she flicks her eyes towards him. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” he dismisses easily. It grates on her. “How’s it going with idiot over there?”

“Dead-end.” She presses her lips tight. “It doesn’t look like nothing.”

Tilting his head, Frank studies her as she orders two new drinks. Her fingers tap impatiently against the wood and she only becomes aware of that herself after she tucks her hair farther back unnecessarily, an uncomfortable habit more than anything else, and spies him matching her erratic beat with his own trigger finger.

Or maybe she’s matching his.

“Hey. What is it?”

“Nothing,” she echoes back with a snap she immediately regrets. Karen makes an effort to inhale a calm breath after her eyes skitter to the drunk woman across the room. “I told you, this guy’s a bust and completely harmless. I can handle him. Feel free to go anytime so you can shake your annoying shadow.”

“Ma'am–”

Deftly snatching up the drinks, she walks away with only a glance back when the other woman returns unceremoniously by almost falling into his lap. Frank lifts a hand to her shoulder to steady her and the woman laughs again.

Prickly heat flares underneath her skin.

“You okay?” The intern asks with a worried expression.

A quick smile, and Karen’s snapping her head up, suddenly too tired to keep up the charade much longer for petty reasons like studying Frank’s newfound sociability. “Yeah. Oh, yeah, just tired, you know? It’s been a long day. Adding alcohol on top of everything might’ve been too ambitious…. Why don’t we reschedule this for another time?”

He accepts that with an eager nod.

When she first moved to New York, she would’ve counted herself lucky to find someone this easy-going and friendly, lack of attraction and seemingly any shared interests aside. But that was a long time and several lives ago. Now, she only hurries her way through splitting the bill and parting ways with an awkward half-hug as he leaves to find a cab and she lies about calling a friend.

Karen doesn’t pick up her phone, watching a bit more blatantly now from behind a fan of hair as Frank holds onto the drunk woman’s elbow, helping her walk upright. The woman croons noisy compliments about his gentlemanly behavior before someone fires up the jukebox once more and drowns out everything else, door slamming shut behind them.

She loosens her clenched jaw with a frustrated sigh.

Whiskey burns a track down her throat as she swallows the rest of the glass in one go, hand pressing against her mouth as she barely keeps a coughing choke at bay. It only briefly distracts her from the urge to break something, or yell at him.

But just what would she yell? She didn’t have any claim over Frank. And, really, the direction her thoughts kept heading in was sorely simplistic. She knew he was far too considerate to leave someone innocent and benign struggling all by themselves. That’s the way he always was with her, staying beside her without being asked during low moments, making sure she got around safely when he just knew she’d be preoccupied or courting trouble.

Maybe that’s why it bothered her so much.

As soon as the idea forms, Karen groans and buries her head in her hands. “Pathetic,” she mutters to herself.

She, Karen Page, would not entertain feeling jealous in regards to one Frank Castle. That was beyond insane.

Irrational anger thrums along her spine anyway.

Knocking back another whiskey as soon as she’s ordered it, she pays her tab and ignores the blurring at the edges of her vision as she pushes out onto the street, gusting chill spreading goosebumps along her skin. She pulls on her coat and knots it closed.

“Ma'am.”

Frank stands at the edge of the sidewalk, hands tucked away casually, gaze bouncing across her face. She’s painfully aware then of her cheeks blushed from a teetering lack of sobriety. She rolls her shoulders, swallowing. “What’re you still doing here?”

“Waiting on you.”

Rolling her eyes, Karen closes the gap between them so they’re not talking so loudly near the door. “Where’s your shadow?”

“Imagine she’s headed home.”

“Did you pay for her taxi, too?”

“Ma'am,” he says quietly, and it’d almost sound like he’s chiding her if there wasn’t such an obvious trace of humor. Stepping to the side slightly, he catches her wandering eyes with his own, corner of his lips quirking in a wisp of a smile. “Never took you for a lightweight.”

“I’m not drunk,” she grumbles.

“Hm.”

“I’m not, I’m–”

Frank narrows his eyes.

She cuts herself off with a huff. “Nevermind. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay, you’re not drunk,” he persists, ignoring her attempt at a dismissal. “But you’re upset. Why?”

“I’m not upset.”

“Even if my eyesight wasn’t perfect, ma'am, that glare’s hard to miss.”

Karen lowers her eyes with a scowl, wracking her suddenly fuzzy brain for a rebuttal that isn’t simply another denial, when one of his hands cups her chin gently. Against her wishes, her breath catches in her chest. All teasing is gone from his stare and replaced by pure intensity.

Something tender settles behind his eyes after a long minute of them standing still, swaying subtly from the passing wind. “I’ll take you home.”

Really, she isn’t drunk, so it’s not reasonable to blame the alcohol, but she makes the split decision to use that as her excuse after she grabs hold of his collar and slants her lips over his. Cool to the touch from waiting on the sidewalk, it’s a remarkable contrast to the heat radiating off her skin. Karen presses closer.

This is one of the worst decisions she’s made – but finally, just for the moment, she can answer the long-burning question inside of how this would feel. How he would feel. Underneath her hands, he’s solid and stable, lips soft as electricity awakens every nerve in her body, makes her intimately aware of his fingers sliding along the edge of her jaw slowly. She gasps faintly and dips her head.

Hand burying in her blonde tresses, Frank surprises her by pulling them flush, capturing her in a sharper kiss as soon as she means to separate. He moans and she chases it readily. Arms snaking around him as he walks her backward, slotting against her after her spine scrapes against exposed brick, she arches further against him. The kiss deepens as her nails dig into his shoulders, dragging along his skull. His hands curl around her hips.

A passing car honks.

They both jolt in shock, Karen yanking her arms back and folding them awkwardly against her chest in the space between them as Frank leans his hands against the wall behind, instead.

She can’t remember how she was going to apologize as she blinks at him, struggling to take in a proper deep breath. It doesn’t help that he’s looking at her with sinfully dark eyes and messy hair she’s caused.

“I was jealous.”

“I know,” he replies immediately, voice of a man absolutely wrecked. Her eyelids flutter, yearning to close and embrace him again. “Figured it out when you kept lookin’ over and flirting with that guy.”

“That was hardly flirting. The way that woman was all over you,” she starts to tease, voice stretching knowingly at the end.

Frank chuckles. “Tried to give me her number.”

“You better not have it.”

“And if I do?” He challenges, eyes lighting up appreciatively at her possessive indignation.

It only spurs Karen to lick her lips and tilt away. “Then you don’t get to walk me home.”

Forehead touching hers, he places a soft kiss at the corner of her mouth and runs a hand up her back. “I’ll buy you coffee.”

He doesn’t have to say it twice.


	26. "you were right about me loving someone, just not about who."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Anonymous asked: Could you write something angsty for Kastle that incorporates the line, "you were right about me loving someone, just not about who." Make it as angsty as your muse wants, just as long as it ends in a (at least) hopeful place if not an actual good place for them. Thank you so much! ]

“You love him…. Right?”

It’s said so simply, troubled gaze piercing through her to her very soul, and Karen’s powerlessly rooted in her seat for a moment before she manages to shake it off. She thinks she did, she really does, really had, but the more she listens to Frank accosting her reasons for walking away, doubt flares and festers like a sickness.

Karen knows at least that there’s supposed to be a difference between feeling love and being in love.

“Shit, I’d– I’d– I’d cut my arm off right here in this restaurant just to feel that one more time from my wife,” Frank confesses, harsh and fast. Her eyes snap up with a gasp barely kept restrained within her lungs. She’s afraid to say or do anything in case he doesn’t mean to share this, doesn’t mean to mesmerize her within his heart-breaking spiel.

She’d felt a fraction close to that, once. But it wasn’t from being in love. It wasn’t from Matt.

Unwillingly, her mind flashes with the scene she’d made at her brother’s wake as she planted herself in front of his bedroom door, screaming at her parents for thinking up the ridiculous notion of letting people go in, letting people touch his things. As if the very idea wasn’t a violation of the loss they were enduring and instead it was just any other space he no longer held the rights of privacy for just because he’d been buried six feet under. They couldn’t do this. They couldn’t act this calm.

She remembers the agony that suffocated as if it’d never go away, remembers staring angrily at the mindless tap-tap-tapping of the therapist’s pen as she sat across from him on that God-forsaken couch at the forcing of her parents.

Frank’s fingers tap much more erratically now as he keeps moving, keeps twitching, and she knows from the words falling out of his own mouth that he’s trapped once more reliving all of his pain. Not the pain of the loss, but the pain of the happiness even when it might not have felt like so before, moments stuck forever in time’s limbo for haunting reflection.

“You sit here, and you’re all confused about this thing, but you have it.”

No, she wants to respond. I don’t have that, I’ve never had it.

Karen barely keeps from choking on a swallow.

 

* * *

 

“Heard about Murdock,” Frank acknowledges while his hair’s still unruly as he resists the thirst for revenge until he’s polished his list of targets without a shred of doubt. For the time being, he’s simply existing, and it’s a sight that bleeds her heart uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, about your loss–”

“It wasn’t just mine,” she corrects.

“Maybe not…. But you loved him.”

“It was different. I’ve moved on.” Karen finds his gaze underneath the shadows of the ball-cap. Disbelief sits there, strong in his convictions, and she doesn’t have the energy for a Round Two argument about this. “Really, I have. The only person I’m worried about right now is you.”

With a faint sigh, Frank turns his eyes to the rest of the park from where he’s propped against a tree. “Didn’t mean to come back and upset you, ma'am.”

Sliding her hands into the warm confines of coat pockets, she tilts her head slightly and studies him for seemingly the hundredth time since he returned. I missed you, she wants to say, the simple phrase rooted in her head from the moment he first opened his mouth and revealed he wasn’t an apparition, wasn’t some hallucination after her mind became swamped in yet another bout of grief from Matt’s loss.

She’d cried, she’d mourned, and then she got up on the Monday after the building fell and lied her ass off in front of Ellison.

The wake came and went with her and Foggy sitting in the pews, listening numbly as Father Lantom delivered a bittersweet eulogy, lighting candles in prayer one last time. There was no funeral to visit this time, no graveyard to step through. The day ended as calmly as it had begun.

Karen stares at Frank and wonders if he’d care to know that. Wonders about his reaction to hearing how much relief masked by angry shock had rushed through her bloodstream from seeing him again, disagreements over his actions past and present completely irrelevant to her compassion.

“I’d be more upset if you hadn’t,” is all she answers.

 

* * *

 

“You’re so full of shit,” she laughs.

All the investigating, the running and hiding, the bullets and explosions in search of vengeance – it’s come and gone, leaving them long afterward with the habit of drinking coffee in her apartment once the clock’s ticked past midnight, no topic ever off the table. At the moment, the conversation is more nothing than something as his vest with its spray-painted skull lies innocently draped over her desk. It’s such an unintentional nod to how much their professional paths repeatedly cross that her lips quirk each time her gaze sweeps over it.

His latest tease unwinds her, and Frank responds in kind with a crooked chuckle, rare moment of relaxation with a beer in hand.

It catches her off guard.

Karen forgets what they’re talking about as their stare settles somewhere between good humor and something more, something intense. For the first time, she doesn’t look for a distraction from it.

Knees brushing against one another, fingers lingering on forearm, it doesn’t matter all that much who leans first. They crash into each other with overwhelming longing, skin flushing as though she’s being set on fire in the best possible way. When it started, God only knows, but all conscious thought is lost when her tongue swipes boldly into his mouth and he responds by taking hold of her hips, pulling her into his lap. The beer bottles lie overturned and forgotten on the floor.

Frank licks a path down her neck after leaving her lightheaded, languidly sucking a mark against the crook of her shoulder and dragging a whine from her lips.

His shirt follows hers hurriedly as they’re tossed aside.

“Ma'am,” he moans, breaking another kiss when her hands find his belt.

She freezes, raising her touch to his ribs as their breaths mingle for a precarious second. “…Are you okay?”

With a nod, his thumbs swipe over where her hip bones are exposed from underneath her hiked-up skirt. “You sure about this? We both know this can’t– can’t be anything, and after tonight, shit–”

“Frank?” Hooded eyes meet hers, his grip instinctively tightening. “Don’t think.”

 

* * *

 

“That was fast,” Karen comments to herself as she moves to check the door for the deliveryman.

Seven months.

Matt shows up on her doorstep seven months after he’s pronounced dead, and Karen’s sure she’s hallucinating this time because dead men didn’t actually come back, not really, and not this peacefully. Porcelain slips from her hand, shattering shards and splattering luke-warm coffee across the floor.

Frank’s up from the table, pistol in hand at his side, before she can blink. Not that she can do much of that – the blinking – as her stare remains fixed on the figure beyond the door’s peephole, lungs painfully stationary. “Hm? Hey,” Frank prompts gently, free arm wrapping around her waist to move her half a step from the mess.

The interruption snaps her out of it enough to slam the locks back and yank the door open. “What the fuck?”

The words come out as a gasp.

Matt shifts on his feet, red glasses perched on his nose the same as always. “Frank?”

“…Red.”

“What the fuck?” Karen repeats, indignation seeping through.

Frank’s touch slides off of her softly.

“Can I come in?”

She lets him, outraged curiosity all-consuming, a million questions running through her mind. Questions about how this was possible, where he’d been, who else knew, and when he’d come back. What exactly had happened at Midland Circle. Karen could yell, could cry, could hug him. Shock leaves her keeping a steady distance.

It isn’t until she’s busying herself nervously with making a fresh pot of coffee that she realizes Frank’s gathered his bag and left without a goodbye. Gray porcelain shards sit in a neat pile on top of her trashcan.

 

* * *

 

“He’s not here, Page.”

Frustrated, she groans at Micro through the crackly intercom.

The sex had been a one-time thing. Everything else – the multiple meetings a week for nothing more than the company, constant comforting touches to hand and waist and jaw in simple passing, her staying over at his hideout or him staying over at hers after late nights usually born from bloody aftermath – only preserved that intimacy. They made it into something much more complicated.

There’s a large absence in every corner of her life once Frank abruptly pulls away. Matt slips nearly seamlessly back into his life as Hell’s Kitchen’s passionate blind lawyer by day and devil vigilante with powerful fists at night. The truth of his return is less than rosy when she pries it all out of him, but he spins a nice tale to everyone else except her and Foggy, and all she can think is that it shouldn’t be so easy for him. Not after everything.

Not as it only makes the seams of her world start to fray apart.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way, she thinks distractedly as she presses on the worn button once again. “I know you’re lying, okay, just let me in.”

“Look, whatever happened between you two, I don’t want any part of it. You’ve made our mutual friend insufferably restless enough.”

Guilt blossoms brutally across her chest, cutting against her nerves like knives. “So let me in and I can fix it.”

“I would, Page. Honest. But he’s really not here.”

Karen drops her head against the cold metal door, banging a mild headache through her skull.

Ignoring it, she tries to reconsider once more, searching through every place she’s been and every one that’s left. She’s at the end of the line. Everywhere else was well and truly off limits to her this time – a burnt shell of a house, memorial stones in a silent graveyard, a hypnotically spinning carousel.

“Can you help me at all?” She begs anyway.

Micro sighs. “I got nothing. If he doesn’t want to be found, I can’t.”

 

* * *

 

“You love him.”

There’s no question to the words. Karen shakes her head.

He’s perched on her rooftop with an unscrewed thermos at his side, disassembled rifle in his hands, and she knows he’s not here to scout for someone else. The scene’s too awkward, too settled for anything more than a long and immobile night ahead. It took a week for her to think to check here. She inwardly kicks herself for that ignorance now.

“You said the same thing, at the diner. Remember?”

Frank ducks his head and starts tucking small ammo boxes away in his worn duffel bag, movements methodic despite the low tremor that rolls across his shoulders. “Gonna deny it again like you did then?”

“Yes.”

He snorts, gaze lowering even further when she steps closer, pajama set and bare feet a stark contrast to his black shirt, black jeans, black boots.

A sense of déjà vu, and Karen could almost be back in that worn leather booth, fresh coffee drifting through the air as a pitchy radio crooned out sappy classics she couldn’t quite name. Except this time he wasn’t the one leaning across the space, the one seeking to capture her stare as he tried opening her to his perceived truths. No, now that was her. And he wasn’t looking up.

“You were right– about me loving someone. Just not about who,” she admits quietly. Her heart pounds harshly against rib-cage.

Frank stands suddenly, taking the thermos with him as he paces, replacing the cap on it roughly. “That’s bullshit, ma'am; we both know it. You loved him, you lost him, he’s back. Ain’t that complicated, is it? There’s no reason for you to keep lookin’ for me.”

“So why are you up here?”

Tossing the thermos in his bag, he crouches to reassemble the rifle. He doesn’t volunteer any answers.

“Just look at me, Frank,” she sighs. “Please.”

He zips his bag up and stands to leave. Desperate, Karen rushes forward and grabs hold of the strap. In an instant, he turns as still as a statue, head shifting nearly imperceptively towards her. She knows him more than well enough by now to catch it anyway. “What are you doing?”

“You’re not walking away while I’m still talking,” she bites.

Frank scoffs. “What do you want, you want to be miserable forever? You wanna run from a good thing and ignore how fucking lucky you are?”

“I have a good thing–”

“Exactly. You wanna–” He shakes his head, meeting her stare unexpectedly. The frustrated fight in her that would’ve yelled back from his interruption becomes lodged at the back of her throat, instead. Defeat and worry mix into an intense torment behind his eyes. “You wanna bring up the diner, okay. I told you to use two hands – you didn’t. I’m sayin’ it again. Go hold on while you still can and don’t let go, you hear me?”

With fingers gripping firmly on the bag, she lifts her other hand to curl around his cheek.

Her thumb caresses his neck when he swallows.

Lips quirking sadly, she leans forward. “That’s what I’m trying to do.”

Though his eyes flicker for half a second to her lips, disbelief flares up once more. “Ma'am….”

“I never had with Matt what you thought I did, Frank.”

The bag slips slowly towards the concrete.

He keeps searching her face, searching for some other truth, but Karen throws caution to the wind as she steps forward and presses her lips gently to his. There’s nothing else she can say to convince him that this is real, that she’s being honest. His own worst enemy is his mind.

Carefully, she removes her hand from the bag to cradle his head completely, and as soon as she lets go, it drops with a muffled thud, Frank’s palms sliding over her back.

“I love you.” I think I’ve loved you for a while now.

His breath shudders against her cheek. “I can’t give you anything, I can’t– what you deserve, I can’t–”

“I’m not asking for any of that,” Karen whispers. “I just want you.”

Church bells ring out midnight somewhere nearby.

Frank gives in by pulling her flush against him, finding her lips with the kiss of a grateful man.


	27. Micro walks in on Frank comforting/caring for Karen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Anonymous asked: Do you think you could please write a scene where Micro walks in on Frank comforting/caring for Karen and maybe after she leaves, Micro questions their connection? Like, he could question it in a good light, a bad light, or maybe both. Or maybe he just gives Frank a look. It's hard to gage what kind of character Micro will be so whatever you choose. :) ]

The blonde shows up on their doorstep with red-rimmed eyes and a tote bag full of research. Micro lets her in for the files.

She’s a begrudgingly useful asset with her skills – quick to connect dots, possessing a reliable gut for reading people, and able to sleuth around for older and decidedly non-electronic information they need but can’t always go dig-up themselves. That was the only reason he’d given in to Frank’s insistence when they argued over whether or not to include her within most of their plans.

That, and there was a glint in Frank’s eyes making it pretty damn clear that he wasn’t really asking.

After the past few months, he’d begun to wonder if Frank got much of a choice, either. Karen Page also had a less-helpful knack for stumbling into the same volatile situations they did – or, rather, that Frank did, since Micro always found himself groaning behind computer screens whenever she snuck in out of nowhere onto the cameras and narrowly avoided landing herself in the middle of inescapable danger.

Once, she’d even helped Frank out. That at least earned his irreplaceable respect.

As soon as he’s done buzzing her through their several layers of security, she drops the bag onto his desk with a comment about turning up early because of a suddenly free weekend. Micro isn’t blind to the tense line along her shoulders or the tired shadows settling across her face. He sees it all, but politely doesn’t make mention to it.

They don’t exactly have what he’d consider a friendship. Colleagues and allies, definitely. ‘Friends’, though, is too much of a stretch for him to be comfortable with – they barely know anything about each other outside of working together like this, each guarded and wary in their own way.

Besides, he has a distinct impression that the feeling’s mutual.

Karen disappears down the hall in the professed quest for coffee while he sorts through everything she’s brought. She was thorough. Micro pulls it all apart and re-organizes, starts cross-referencing everything with his own databases, and doesn’t manage to lift his head until a short hour’s passed, neighborhood cat prancing by one of the motion sensors outside causing him to blink from one blue screen to another.

Scratching his hands through his mess of hair, he sighs and reaches for his mug of tea. Cold porcelain shocks his skin. He mutters a curse.

Standing and stretching, he heads for the kitchen.

“You should’ve gone to a hospital.”

“They ask too many questions,” Karen sighs. “And it’s not that bad.”

“I’m gonna kill ‘em.”

“Frank….”

The conversation drifts quietly, at first, until he’s a foot from the doorway and can see from the half-hidden angle that she’s leaning against the dining table they never really use, sweater rolled up half-way as Frank stands between her legs and patches her up. Wound obscured and out of sight, Micro’s feet stop moving as he racks his brain for any signs he’d missed.

Only a general stiffness in her composure comes to mind. She was good at covering.

“Don’t ask me that. Not that.”

Micro doesn’t necessarily mean to, but he lingers, eyes narrowing at his friend’s plea. That was beyond rare – it was downright non-existent, limited to a handful of instances he could count on one hand. And all of them were when Frank talked of his family.

“I returned the favor by breaking his nose and kicking him down a flight of stairs. Trust me, he’s worse of.”

Taping off a square bandage, Frank uncharacteristically takes his time. “Good. But that’s not enough.”

“Please, Frank.”

“Don’t….” Shaking his head, he pulls her sweater back down for her and they stare at each other long enough to make Micro uncomfortable. A better man would turn away, but he’d always let curiosity get the better of him. It’s only why he had to live in exile in the first place.

“Please,” Karen whispers again.

Frank caves with a deep breath and a single nod.

Micro steps forward with a knock on the doorframe. Instantly, they separate, Karen straightening to stand properly and Frank stepping away, tossing the bandage packaging in the trash. “Interrupting?”

“No,” they say, echoing each other, and he snorts disbelievingly at that. Karen clears her throat as he refills his mug with fresh water and doesn’t attempt to cover how he’s side-eyeing both of them intrusively. “I was gonna tell you, I couldn’t find much on Menendez except a file transfer number. I don’t think it was scrubbed, but–”

“–moved,” Micro finishes. She nods readily. “Human nature strikes again; most can’t actually handle destroying their own shit, luckily for us. Thanks for the heads up.”

“Yeah, of course.” She glances to Frank, mysterious look exchanged as Micro pops his cup in the microwave. He already knew he was going to sit hunkered behind his desk for the next four hours, at least – he couldn’t conjure the effort for more than a lazy man’s tea right now.

And the clear plastic gives him the opportunity to peer through the reflection as Frank tilts his head, some sign that makes Karen roll her shoulders and pick up her purse again.

“Right, well. Talk later.”

Micro raises a hand in semblance of a wave over his shoulder. Frank stays mute.

Neither move until the loud security door clangs shut. Microwave beeping behind him, Micro ignores it as he turns around with folded arms mirroring his friend’s. “Remind me why she’s so important again?”

Frank’s brows lower.

“She puts our operations at risk every time she gets noticed and winds up in trouble,” he points out flatly.

“She’d follow this shit with or without us. The help’s mutual so stop talking 'bout this, got it?” Frank pushes off the wall and walks to the door. Micro can’t argue that well – he’s right, and they both know it, they’d barely be able to make do without some of the insight she’s thrown their way, let alone the heavier dumps of information – so he doesn’t try.

“Just answer me one question.”

Frank stops, turns his head to the side slight. Waiting.

“When you came back to the city for this – did she actually find you, or did you find her?”

“…Drop it, Micro.”

He didn’t have to. That was answer enough.


	28. protective on a busy train

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Anonymous asked: Could you maybe do a KASTLE fic with frank being protective of Karen on a busy train? ]

Karen looks peaceful when she’s asleep.

Frank knows he isn’t one deserving of this observation, certainly doesn’t have any need for it, but he unintentionally discovers it anyway as he shadows her on a calm Thursday that has her investigating far from innocent things. Paid hits and mob cover-ups with a local FBI agent connection. She hadn’t made it to that rogue government relationship yet, but it wouldn’t take long for her to catch wind of it. She’d been working fast.

Despite that temporary ignorance, her position was perilously fragile, and she didn’t have the slightest idea.

Not with the way she was currently dozing on the subway just past rush hour.

Propped up against the wall in a seat at the end of the car, her bag is tucked tightly underneath folded arms as she leans away from the rest of the busy space defensively. Not the first time she’d done this, then. He wasn’t all that surprised. Another stop and the doors open as the crowd ebbs and flows, Frank shuffling innocuously a few steps closer along the overhead handrails.

A man behind him does the same.

This guy’s far less subtle, eyes narrowed onto the oblivious blonde when Frank turns lazily and chances a glance over. Goatee, light scar above his brow, tan jacket. Right hand kept suspiciously close to his waist with fingers wrapped in a belt loop too forcefully. Tense and waiting.

He wasn’t going to get his chance.

Steadily, Frank follows the shifting crowd, making his way forward as he keeps the day’s more dangerous stalker in his periphery. Karen was ruthless in her new career path, unafraid of going after anyone and everyone corrupt, snapping at new stories like a hungry shark. It was a perfect fit for her, perfect outlet to pour in all of her passion for something actually meaningful.

Which was why he’d hesitated.

Just for a day, barely 25 hours now, but here he was – hesitating. Tight blonde bun and flapping trench-coat stepping into his scope’s line of sight, he’d been powerless to do anything more than pause and watch. Kept watching long after he had planned to set up, don the Punisher vest, and get down to business.

He owed her too much. He could at least give that time to her.

Well, he’d thought he could, thought he’d be able to talk this through with her, but like it or not, pissed or not, she’d have to deal with finding another story now.

There’s a boy no older than fourteen sitting hunched next to her, monstrous textbook open on his lap. Frank slips a twenty out of his pocket. “Hey. Trade you for the seat, kid.”

Hesitant, the boy eyes him up and down before closing the book and snatching the bill. He stands with a shrug. “Yeah, whatever.”

As soon as they trade places, vanilla wafts into his nose and brings with it a vision of hazy yellow. It’d been all over her apartment, imprinted into her hair and clothes, clinging alarmingly to his own hands long after he’d tackled her, long after he stopped touching her. Just when it started to dissipate, he’d slid into her car with stolen keys and found himself bombarded once more. Guilt chafed at him then.

Familiarity centers him now.

Karen sighs quietly and his fingers twitch, gaze keeping track of the hitman’s boots less than ten feet away.

She’d upgraded her lot in life, she was getting the recognition she deserved, but it still didn’t appear to be enough for her to be happy, truly happy, and that tugs his resting frown down further. Murdock dead, that paper of hers trapping her attention upwards of sixteen hours a day – and that was something else he shouldn’t know, but he has no excuse for it.

He has no excuse for intentionally checking in on her from time to time, either.

Looking at the kid whose seat he’d just bought, Frank leans forward. “Mind if I borrow a pen and paper?”

“Got another twenty?”

A smirk, and they make the trade. He rips out the page when he’s done and folds it, returning the notepad and pen to the curious boy before leaning back stoically. The square note taps against his thigh steadily.

As the train slows, approaching its next stop, Frank lifts his hardened stare to her other stalker. The man’s eyes flicker over. A pause, and then recognition clicks. Cruel satisfaction twists his lips in a way that has the other man moving a step towards the doors, instead. Every cheater, every murderer, every shit-bag knew his face one way or the other – no one stood immune against the fear of death.

And death was his promise.

The doors open and he waits, one eye on the direction the other disappears in before a heavily pregnant woman squeezes near with a constant string of apologies falling from her lips because of her inconvenient girth. Frank stands and nods to the seat.

“Thank you!” She sinks into the seat with a grateful exhale.

He holds out the note with his number written inside. “My friend there fell asleep. Can you give her this when she wakes? Won’t be long, her stop’s next.”

Smiling slight, the woman takes it. “Sure thing.”

Frank slips out before the doors close. A quick jog up the steps to street level and he spots the tan jacket once more, man moving calmly through the masses, crossing the street with half a glance back, unseeing. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he smoothly closes the distance. Sadistic anger boils within steadily. It’s all too easy to stoke it.

They’d meant to harm her – to slash her up in broad daylight, use her to send a message, create silence out of fear. All he can imagine is the look of shock that would’ve dimmed her bright eyes, the pool of crimson dripping off the bench seat. His jaw clenches. It hadn’t happened. It wouldn’t happen.

But it could’ve.

The man enters a side street, steps up to a deserted walkway reaching for the doorknob, but Frank drags him without warning off the stoop and into an adjoining alley. His knuckles bruise until the thin skin splits and tears apart, couple solid hits the other manages on him never registering with much force as fury drives him until the other man’s struggling to breathe around broken bones. With his own knife carving a straight line up through his gut, the shell of a body slumps to the floor.

Frank wipes a spray of blood off his cheek and steps back.

A shrill ring echoes between concrete loudly. His phone.

He doesn’t have to check to know it’s Karen and wonders, not for the first time, why a part of him made her such an exception. Why he couldn’t stop himself from making botched attempt after botched attempt at reaching out when the only one it really kept inconveniencing was her. Or worse – he was hurting her. He had to stop.

Despite his intentions of ten minutes prior, Frank ignores the call now, wiping drenched hands off on jeans as best as possible before gathering the other man’s wallet and walking away. There was still a job to finish. He’d hesitated long enough.


	29. "technically i killed him"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Anonymous asked: You're writing is to die for btw. Your characterization of both frank and karen is so on point. You write them so elegantly! I have a Kastle prompt for you. Karen gets attacked and before Frank can get to her she stabs her attacker but before he dies frank shoots him in the face so later when karen is having a panic attack franks like "technically I killed him" as he patches her up or something ]

The blood won’t wash off.

Her hands are scrubbed raw, nails soaked through and fragile, but she only pumps more soap into her palms and tries again as the red stains linger defiantly. Lightheaded spots dance across her vision as her lungs struggle with short breaths.

She hadn’t been prepared for it – and that was almost the worst part.

The asshole tricked her by using one of her sources and she hadn’t thought long about why the kid’s voice was so shaky across the line, immediately and dismissively associating it with the way he fearfully talked of wanting her to throw away everything they’d discussed instead of printing it in ink because the gang would know exactly who it was, they’d just know. Karen only dug her heels in and went to talk her source off the ledge in person.

But they’d already found out.

The boy barely seventeen years old opened the door, apology just passing between his lips before collapsing from the deep cuts crisscrossing his abdomen. She dropped to his side, purse slipping off her shoulder in alarm before a man shifted out of the shadows, grabbing hold of her hair with an excruciating yank. Everything afterward happened too fast.

“Okay, let’s establish a baseline. You know how to get out of a choke-hold?” Trish had asked the first day Karen showed up at her apartment with workout clothes in a bag, accepting the offer of learning some free Krav Maga.

“Well – kind of. I’ve successfully poked eyes out, stepped on a man’s foot, and gone for the balls a couple times.”

Trish snorted. “You’re definitely sharing those stories, later. Right now, I’m gonna teach you how to break a prick’s hand.”

For a brief second amongst the chaos, he’d stumbled with an elbow around her neck, knife wobbling inches from piercing an artery as she struggled to push it back. They’d practiced this move so much, Karen didn’t have to think. A twist, a pop, and before the knife could lodge into her or fall to the floor, she grasped the hilt and spun, burying it her attacker. A spray of crimson splashed across her cream blouse.

The man stood shocked still. When his disbelieving stare lifted to her, anger alighting, she removed the blade only to jam it in higher, just underneath his rib-cage.

His breathing gurgled.

And then his brains splattered against the wall.

Karen yelped, hands flying to her face. The shot only registered within her eardrums after Frank appeared in front of her and removed the knife from the second dead body she was responsible for tonight lying at her feet. “Hey. Hey. Did you touch anything else?”

She shook her head jerkily.

He held her steady. “Good; okay. Come on, gotta get you outta here.”

Another light touch to her shoulder now and Karen’s flinching in front of her kitchen sink, hands shaking underneath the running faucet. She blinks and the stains grow, splotches entirely covering her fingers and stretching up to her wrists. It won’t stop, it won’t go away, just keeps growing and deepening underneath her skin, branding her. Tears track down her face as she chokes on a sob.

“Hey. Look at me.” Slowly, Frank shuts off the tap and wraps a towel around her hands, making her turn as he pulls them towards himself. “What you’re seein’, it’s not there.”

She drags her stare from the hidden mess and meets his concerned gaze, inhaling sharply. “There…. There’s no blood?”

Shaking his head, his grip tightens, thumbs rubbing reassuring circles over her knuckles. “None.”

Karen flickers her eyes between his erratically. He could be lying to appease her, to soothe her, and she knows in the back of her mind that they don’t do that – they’re brutally honest with each other, apologies in the quiet tone of harsh confessions – but sometimes she thinks he could be tempted. Like now. And sometimes she thinks she’d almost want that, the pretty falsehoods, if just for a moment.

“Your hands are fine, ma'am,” Frank says softly.

Her shoulder sag, hip leaning against the counter next to her. Her eyelids squeeze shut.

She remembers vividly when her spine collided with the edge of a table, strangled gasp bursting forth as her lower back zinged painfully numb. The rest of it is eerily a blur of darkness and shadows. She knows he just kept coming, kept rushing, shallow lines opening across her arms no matter how many kicks and blows she landed in return, but that’s more instinct than memory informing her.

Same as how she’d known she wasn’t the one responsible for Daniel Fisher’s death despite the black void of recollection and dripping kitchen knife dangling within her grip.

Except– she’d done it this time.

Not even an hour ago, she’d stabbed a man intentionally and repeatedly, stomach gushing as the light dimmed in his eyes. The handle pressed against her palm hard enough for her to expect a blue bruise in its wake, thick blood coating her fingers and ruining her clothes. Without thinking, Karen opens her eyes and ducks her head. Another horrified sob threatens to burst.

She yanks her hands from Frank’s and tears at the blouse, buttons bouncing to the floor as she claws it open, fumbling to pull it down and off her arms. The splatter and smudges only mock her, threatening to seep through. Clean hands press over her unblemished abdomen in a panic before he stills her by taking gentle hold of her wrists. He tilts her palms upward to accept a T-shirt.

One of her own, a cheap and baggy ‘I HEART NYC’ she vaguely recalls Foggy buying as a joke gift, once.

Gratefully, she slips it on in a fast second. She suddenly doesn’t want to know how long she’d been standing at this sink lost in troubled thought as Frank moved through her place to fetch a towel, a shirt, and the first aid kit she spies then as she lets him maneuver her so her back’s against the counter. Carefully, he checks her cuts.

She watches him wrap her up in gauze with shaky deep breaths as she tries to stop crying, stop thinking of the boy torn apart and the blade at fault that she’d wielded so effortlessly afterward. “I got my job at Nelson & Murdock because my former employers framed me for murder,” she shares.

A brief pause, and then Frank snorts. “Any reason why?”

“Found something I shouldn’t have. So they drugged me and put the– the knife in my hand.”

“Hm. Yeah….You got a habit for that, ma'am.” He peers up at her with a wisp of something like an admiring smile before continuing. “But if that’s what’s bothering you – you didn’t murder him. Actually stab this guy, sure, but you were defending yourself. And if you wanna get technical, I’m the one that blew his head off. Knife to the gut doesn’t compete with that.”

A watery laugh escapes her. “Thank you…for this. Everything. I don’t know.”

Frank’s hands hover over her arms longer than necessary as he stares down at her skin now more covered up than visible. “Any other wounds I should know about?”

With a nod, Karen turns around. The numbness had slowly subsided, nerves reawakening with sharp twinges along her spine, across her lower back, and bringing with them a steadily thrumming ache from what’s most assuredly a large bruise. It’s the only part of her that really hurts. She knows she deserves more.

He lifts up the hem of her shirt enough to reveal it, one palm softly caressing her blemished back.

A tear slips down her cheek. “I got that kid killed.”

“No, don’t put that on yourself,” he protests swiftly.

“It’s true. I did. When I was framed it’s because they killed the guy I tried to tell, they murdered him because of me, and I said I wouldn’t let that happen again, but– I have. I keep doing it,” she sobs guiltily, wrapping her arms around herself. “I should’ve turned him away, looked for someone else. He was just an innocent kid that wanted out. He didn’t– He didn’t deserve–”

Her words dissolve into incoherent nothingness as she gives in to weeping.

Gently, Frank wraps his arms around her. “You’re gonna be okay,” he whispers against the crook of her neck. There’s no lies, no attempts to convince her differently from the blame crushing her heart. It’s exactly what she needs.

With the slightest nudge, she leans back against him and breaks down. He simply holds her tight.


	30. Kastle & Max + pumpkin patch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ prompted by nxtyourfirstrodeo ]

“Last time?” Karen asks, walking backwards to look at him properly without the sun blinding her.

“Last and only…three years ago,” Frank says softly. His lips settle into a slight smile as his eyes idly track the vines at their feet. “Lisa was begging us to and Maria found some place, outside Newark. Pumpkins, hay rides, the works. Kids went crazy for it…. What about you?”

“Oh, God – ten or eleven years ago? Back in Vermont with my brother. Sadly, they just had the pumpkins.”

“Yeah?” He whistles for Max when the dog wanders too far away, disappearing behind a half-fence for a moment. Startled, Max lifts his head with a floppy ears, prancing back near them before getting distracted by the pumpkins again. They’d only had to warn him away from trying to eat them once. “What’d you do, you, uh, carve a Jack o’ Lantern with it?”

“Isn’t that what everyone does?” She teases.

Huffing a laugh, he nods. “Yeah, suppose so.”

“Kevin gutted it, I carved it. Gave it that generic teeth-y snarl.” Attempting to mime it with her fingers at her mouth, the gesture is more like vampire teeth than anything, but it makes him smirk and shake his head.

“Did that with all four of ours,” he shares after a moment. “Took hours, getting ‘em just right, you know. And the mess after, it was impossible to clean up. Kept finding pumpkin seeds tracked across the house for a month.”

She smiles fondly. “You guys went all out.”

Frank returns her look. “Yeah….Yeah, we tried.”

At that, he ducks his head away, searching for Max as an excuse to hide the wash of emotions rolling over his face same as every time he recalled a memory. She pretends not to notice. Gives him the space to either gather or retreat into himself as much as he needs.

Instead, Karen yawns slightly from the already long day and terrible sleep. She turns on her heel to walk beside him again.

He hadn’t been a fan of this weekend road-tripping idea of hers – not at first. Operating more on the down-low for the past few weeks because of nursing a particularly badly fractured rib meant he had the time, but it didn’t mean he was any more receptive than normal to the thought of leaving the city for superfluous reasons, so she’d given up on insisting he be the one pretty quickly.

“What’s that?” He’d asked only a few days prior after she knelt in front of Max and opened her purse.

It was a well established habit now for Frank to inform her when the two of them were out, swinging a few blocks near the Bulletin so she could meet up and join in on their harmless walk. After all, she adored Max, Max adored her, and it was a constantly convenient way to pass information if neither had the time for lengthy apartment or diner visits. It was simple.

And it meant everything to her.

“For the trip,” Karen had shared easily, clicking the new collar into place around Max to test its fit.

He’d sighed. “Thought we talked about that, and agreed–”

“That you’re not going, yes. But I can still bring Max, can’t I?” Rubbing the pit-bull’s ears appreciatively, his lips stretched in a happy smile. “Yeah, how does that sound, buddy? You’ll get to explore some wide-open fields for probably the first time in your life. Won’t that be fun?”

“Ma'am–”

“He looks dapper with this bow-tie, admit it,” she’d nudged as Max licked her arm affectionately.

“Karen.”

Standing, she’d tilted her head at him, humor dropping to reveal anxious hope before he could keep that worried tone up, prodding her with hesitantly forthright questions. “Fine, I’m asking. Please? I don’t– I don’t want to go alone. Okay?”

It’d been foolish of her to think he’d actually drop it. “…Why you goin’ at all?”

“Bulletin’s vacation days don’t roll over into the new year.”

He’d only stared patiently. She’d shrugged her shoulders, glancing away. “Okay, fine, I need a break. It’s been two really shitty years – and I could handle all that, I am, but last year was the first holiday season in a really long time that I had, you know, friends. It felt like a family. And all that’s gone again, so.

"Before I work way too much and pretend all the gift-giving, family-table stuff isn’t depressing as hell, I want to…do something. Enjoy something. Just, I don’t know, watch the seasons change outside of this claustrophobic city for a day. It sounded like a nice idea….Okay?”

“…Okay. I’ll bring Max.”

“Thank you.”

They hadn’t talked any more about it, which left her relieved, but then he’d shown up at her door at dawn this morning, Max in tow, asking for the keys so she could sit passenger directing them, and she’d outright beamed. Hadn’t stopped, really, as she’d popped Ben’s tapes of classics into the radio and pointedly blocked everything else out of her mind except the here and now.

The here and now of teasing Frank all through an impromptu stop at an orchard as she bought jams (most for herself but some for Doris, when she went to visit again sometime soon) and when they braked for sandwiches at an unassuming deli that reminded her of Fagan Corners with its small-town charm. Three hours out of the city and it was practically a whole other world. She forgot, sometimes, that not everything was shadowed streets or winding hallways. It was easy to do that.

The reminder of more unwound the muscles stretched taut along her shoulders, unfurled her lungs with easily deep breaths, and brought a lazy upward curve to her lips she couldn’t shake off even if she bothered to try.

And slowly, as the day passed, she’s watched the same thing happen to Frank.

Karen side-eyes him now as they stop where Max lays stretched out underneath the shade of a maple tree, sleepy and over-heated with his tongue lolling out of his mouth. He crouches to rub the pit-bull’s belly. She snatches the black ball cap off his head.

Brows raised, amusement lit behind his eyes, he looks at her. “You mind givin’ that back, ma'am.”

“No. I see you wear this almost every time we meet and I’m tired of it. No one’s going to recognize The Punisher in an upstate pumpkin patch, Frank.”

His tongue pokes his cheek out a moment as he debates over retorts. “That’s quite presumptuous.”

“You can sue me if I’m wrong. I know a good lawyer.”

Frank shakes his head, smirking.

Daringly, she adjusts the strap slightly before sliding it on herself. The faint smell of his cheap and vaguely-minty soap wafts around her. “And, you don’t get it back until you drop me off. We’ve still got, what, five hours of daylight left? You could use some sun on that face.”

His stare fixes on her, suddenly intense as his eyes flicker over her form and the accompanying hat a few times. When she crosses her arms with a jutted out chin, he nods and resumes rubbing Max’s belly. “…Alright, ma'am. Looks better on you anyway.”

Karen grins.

They move from the spot ten minutes later for her to finally pick out a small pumpkin while he gets Max in front of the much-needed car air-conditioning. When he steps around her, he tugs the brim down until it bumps her nose and blinds her in a fast second. She yelps indignantly, fixing it back in place, but he lets out the loudest laugh she’s ever heard burst from his chest, so she keeps her retaliation to a light smack against his shoulder before he walks away.

Since she knows he won’t look back, she snaps a quick picture of him walking Max, matching plaid leash clicked back into place and dangling from his hand. It’s a cute sight. She knows no one would believe it was actually Frank Castle, former marine and now greatly feared killer of criminals. Somehow, that makes it feel all the more captivating.

Yet another secret tucked away. She didn’t mind keeping this one to herself.

 

* * *

 

“I think Max is gonna need a couple days off to recover,” Karen giggles quietly.

“Kept waitin’ for him to hyperventilate. Did he ever stop trying to smell everything?”

“Nope.”

Frank chuckles. “You spoiled him…. It was a good idea. This was a good idea.”

Side profile partially obscured from the contrast of the setting sun casting streaks of orange and magenta across the sky, her gaze catches on eyelashes fluttering close to his cheekbones. Staring down at Max. Her smile grows. “Thank you, for coming.”

He nods slow, jaw working for a long moment as if he’s going to say something else. But he doesn’t.

Karen leans back more comfortably and watches the clouds dance across the sky.

The last time she’d done something like this – sat on the hood of a car on the side of the road a hop and a skip away from anyone else – was sometime back in high school, time so far gone and memories so fuzzy from intentional forgetfulness that she couldn’t even remember who she’d been with. One of her handful of friends after a bad day, maybe. With a boy, even less likely. She’d been so careful with dating, at first – and then all she’d wanted was to get out and leave everyone behind as fast as possible.

All too easily, her thoughts drift to the ice cream stop half an hour ago. It hadn’t taken much effort to convince Frank to pull over this time. She’d ordered from the window, he’d let Max out on the leash to smell the grass two feet away, and then the woman behind the counter was commenting loudly about what a lovely couple they made. He’d stiffened. She protested immediately.

When she proposed eating outside instead of in the car, a couple minutes down the road, he hadn’t said anything. A turn of the wheel and that was that. Back to the constantly half-furrowed brow and more monosyllabic than not responses. He was here, he was with her, but not completely.

Tomorrow, she wondered if she’d think this was all some silly dream yearning for a dose of escapism.

“I’m sorry,” she blurts out.

When Frank turns his head, she runs a hand through her hair sheepishly.

“I meant, I’m sorry about the woman back there. Assuming we’re– you know. I didn’t think about how we could look and forgot people not in the city are so, uh, personal…. Anyway. I’m sorry, if that was hard–”

“Don’t. You don’t gotta apologize,” he says softly.

Karen lifts her gaze apprehensively. Dark eyes cast ever darker by the light slipping lower on the horizon, she’s nevertheless able to spy the sincerity there. It’s too abundant to miss. “Still.”

“What if I don’t want you having anything to be sorry for?” He asks carefully while intently searching her face.

Blinking a few times, she licks her lips. “I… don’t think I understand what you mean.”

With a feather-light touch, his fingers brush against hers on the warm hood of the car. Her eyes drop.

Instinctively, as he reaches closer, her hand turns, opening her palm up as his slides over and their hands interlace. He squeezes gently. A test, maybe. She squeezes back, curling her long fingers more firmly around his muscular hands. They wouldn’t seem to, on the surface, but they slot against each other seamlessly. Her heart stutters a beat.

“Understand?” Frank asks simply, whispering.

Meeting his stare again, only a few inches from her own, she nods once. And then she kisses him.

It takes her breath away immediately, shock of it making her gasp. His lips part with hers, chasing the touch, and she arches back as he deepens the kiss in a quick moment. His free hand buries in her hair, knocking off the cap she’d turned backwards. It slides forgotten down the windshield as she grips at his shirt collar, tugging him closer. Teeth catch on his lower lip and he moans. Another sound she’s never heard from him quite like that before.

Karen loves it, biting more intentionally this time.

He groans. With a gentle tug, her head tips back and he migrates to her neck.

“We should’ve done this sooner,” she breathes.

Frank chuckles against collarbone. “Hm. How long’s the drive back again?”

“Oh. Well, if you walk me in instead of dropping me off, you don’t get that hat back. It’s mine.”

“Good. I wanna keep seein’ you wear it.”

“You’ll just knock it off again,” she laughs faintly before using her hand at his collar to pull his wandering mouth back to hers.

“Maybe I wanna keep seein’ that, too,” he manages before kissing her again.

She decides she loves that idea, too.


	31. dislocation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Anonymous asked: I have a Kastle Writers Prompt for you! Frank and Karen are tied up and in order for them to escape Frank has to dislocate Karen's arm/or thumb to escape and Karen has to convince him to do it because he obviously doesn't wanna hurt her. Keep up the good work xoxoxo ]

“Frank, stop.”

He grunts and lifts the heavy door blown off its hinges, ignoring her. It’s hopeless, and they both know it, but he searches the body underneath in case this one has a spare set of keys. She’d already told him they’d been thrown God knows where out the window long before he’d arrived, slitting throats stealthily before they’d wisened up and pulled out their guns, but he won’t listen now. He just keeps trying.

Trying again and again to find another way out of this that doesn’t hurt her. That doesn’t make him one responsible for any of her injuries.

It’s so damn noble, she could throttle him, really. After the hellish night she’s had, Karen might even be tempted to do so – if she had working use of at least one of her hands right now. As it is, her arms are stuck twisted painfully behind and around a structural column, shoulder blades locked into place jarringly against her back with little to no room to move.

“Frank,” she calls again.

Kicking against the useless body out of frustration, he turns in a circle, surveying the scene with a ducked head and hunched shoulders.

She knows this version of him – has seen it countless times since that first night in an innocuous diner when her nerves had been so frayed she’d sobbed from the mangled men at his feet. No cries come from the half a dozen bodies torn apart around her now. There’s more than just these, out in the halls past this room, down the stairs they’d forced her up with a cold muzzle pressed against her temple, and that doesn’t bother her either.

Fumes waft through the door.

“Frank.”

He lifts his head then at the fearful tremble in her voice. They both smell the smoke before gray puffs seep through, eyes turned to the doorway. She watches him check the pistol in his hand, carefully stepping through and disappearing to find the source. In a quick minute, he returns, jaw clenching and unclenching. He was getting more anxious.

“What?”

“Electrical fire. Front of the stairs.”

Karen knocks her head back against the column. “Shit.”

With a sound vaguely in agreement, he walks over and tests the cuffs locked more tightly around her wrists than any real police officer would’ve made them. That hadn’t been her first clue when her day took a turn for the worst. The metal digs into her skin, nerves tingling up and down her arms, and she winces from the chafed skin as he moves them ever slightly. He mutters curses underneath his breath.

They weren’t the typical chain cuffs or convenient zip-ties. Every time he’d tried unlocking them – shimmying the hinge, picking at the mechanism, breaking a weak spot with tension – they only seemed to constrict further. Biting her lip, she’d done her best to keep him from knowing, to keep him from worrying, but then he’d twisted her wrists just a hair to get leverage and a rough edge of the circlets cut against bone.

Frank had immediately let go. A trickle of blood ran down her palm, dripping off her fingers.

As the nauseatingly plastic smell within the smoke fills the room more steadily, glow from the fire starting to dance shadows across the doorway, he sighs, hands gently holding her forearms as he thinks.

“There’s got to be a way,” Karen huffs, panic building suffocatingly along her throat. “Just– I don’t care. Cut my hands off or shoot my wrist or something, please. I– I don’t want to die here, Frank.”

“You’re not,” he says adamantly. “You’re not.”

“Please, just….”

“…I don’t want to hurt you,” Frank says quietly.

She can’t help laughing a touch hysterically. “What’s the plan?”

“Whatever shitbag put these on, they’re above your joint.”

“Is that why they hurt like a son of a bitch?”

“Partially,” he replies softly.

For a fleeting moment, she can pretend they’re in the more normal aftermath of her stitching him up and bantering about his latest traumas. It was easier to see him the one banged up – it was expected. And he made a better patient, she thinks, as she shifts on her sore feet, makes herself gasp from the way the motion shifts her cuffs, the jolt springing tears to her eyes.

He clears his throat. “I have to dislocate your thumb. But it might not work.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your wrist…. If it doesn’t work, I gotta dislocate your wrist, too.”

Her eyes slip closed as an unwilling shudder rolls through her.

Frank must feel it, because he rubs her arms lightly. “I can’t tell ya it’s not gonna hurt.”

“I know.”

“…Cops have been looking for you all day, and this wasn’t quiet,” he starts, oppressive heat slowly building in the room, and she could laugh again at how surreal this is: Frank intentionally advocating for waiting on the authorities and their less violent methods. All because of her. Only because of her.

“No,” she cuts him off. “Just. Just do it.”

“Ma'am.” It almost sounds like a beg, but she doesn’t have any better ideas herself, and they both know it.

She swallows and the smoke in the air scratches inside her throat. “You’re not hurting me, Frank, you’re saving me. Please. Please, just do it.”

“…I’m sorry.”

A pop, and white-hot pain zings in a web through her hand, making her nearly yelp. She hadn’t felt his fingers take hold of her thumb, but she feels the prickling numbness take over her joint now, feels every twist of the metal threatening to slice further into her skin as he tries shimmying it down. He rotates her wrist every which way as she muffles whines behind lips pressed thin.

“Fuck,” he mutters to himself. “Fucking piece of shit bastards.” There’s a thud, hit radiating through the column from his skull to hers. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he repeats.

Karen opens her mouth to reassure him but he doesn’t give her any warning this time, either, before wrapping his fingers around her wrist and dislocating it methodically in one fluid motion. Shooting spasms of agony trace up her arm and into her shoulder, a deep ache radiating for her wrist, shocking all of her nerves. A short startled scream bursts from her chest.

The metal ring slides off with meager resistance. He continues whispering apologies until she’s half-standing, half-leaning against the column with her uninjured arm at her side, cuffs dangling while Frank holds her other hand in front of her. Attentively, he braces her elbow. She watches with dread as he snaps the bones relatively painlessly into place once more.

“Jesus Christ,” she breathes out, mollified even as clouds of smoke start to sting her eyes.

By the time they climb out the window and barely make it to the ground with only minor scrapes, every nerve in her arm tingling and making it hard to fully use her hand, sirens blare from down the street as something explodes inside. Flames blast out glass from another window only a few yards away. She latches onto Frank tightly in the parking lot shadows while they still have a second to spare.

Hesitantly, his arms encircle her, hugging back.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs quietly into her hair.

Karen shakes her head. “Don’t feel guilty.” Ashen musk is horribly imprinted on both of them, but she takes a deep breath anyway, catching the faintest hints of blood underneath from his jacket. It’s actually a relief.

Her new normal.

“Get that checked at the hospital. Might swell up.”

“I will,” she promises. “And you swing by my apartment. I mean it,” she adds softly when Frank pulls away with a disturbed gaze.

Fingers grabbing her elbows and running down her arms, he nods before squeezing her hands in lieu of a verbal goodbye. He’s just out of sight when the cruisers pull up, lights flashing and sirens blaring. She only squints over, cradling her traumatized arm as she wraps her arms around herself from his absence, and runs a quick cover story over in her head.

“You okay?” Brett asks, half an hour later, and she blinks up from the back of the ambulance when she realizes he’s the first of the dozen on the scene to do so.

“I’ve been better.”

“Mind telling me what happened?” He leans against the propped open doors.

Karen shakes her head. “It was a blur. I don’t know. They knocked me out and I didn’t wake up until they were shooting and then some explosion went off and I smelled smoke. I panicked. Hurt my hand trying to get out – which, actually, is there any chance I can get these all the way off anytime soon?” She lifts her hand with its still-dangling cuffs.

“Shit. Sorry.” Brandishing his own handcuff key, her shoulders sag when the metal stops constricting her blood flow.

“…Just any key works?”

“Best kept secret. Don’t tell anyone.”

“Yes, sir,” she says, already planning on buying her own to keep a key. Just in case. Maybe she’d get one for Frank, too.

“Something funny?”

“Hm?”

“You’re smiling.”

“Oh.” Karen shakes her head. “I’m a little out of it. A lot, actually, I’m exhausted. And I still have to go get this wrist X-ray’d.”

“I hear you, I do. Just gotta ask again – you’ve really got no idea who attacked them?” He gestures to the building.

“Someone with guns…. No, I never saw them,” she lies without hesitation. If they had no indication yet that it could’ve been the Punisher then she wouldn’t be the one to give it to them. “Maybe some rival gang. I don’t know.”

Brett sighs. “Well, count yourself lucky – again. These pricks won’t be bothering you over those articles anymore. Just come by the station before nine so I can get your statement. You know the drill…. Hey, want me to call Foggy, tell him to meet you at the hospital?” He asks suddenly, turning back around a couple feet away.

She shakes her head. “No, it’s okay.” She could get home herself. And besides – she’d already have another friend waiting for her there. Not for the first time, Karen is reminded how much of her life most don’t know about her anymore. But she couldn’t trade that for something normal, something without a dangerous job and a dangerous Frank, relationship too complicated to define. She wouldn’t trade, not anymore.

Normal was overrated.

“I’ll be fine.”


	32. cute!drunk!Karen calling Frank

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Anonymous asked: Whenever you get the chance, could you write something with Drunk!Karen who calls Frank to come get her because she's had too much to drink and she's pretty sure she's got a stalker and doesn't want to chance it. I am really in the mood for cute!drunk!Karen because it's my headcanon that depending on what she drinks she's a fun drunk and Protective!Frank who's seeing her drunk and completely carefree for the first time. I just need a break from angsty things right now. Thank you! ]

“Honey,” she croons into the receiver.

To her relief, Frank doesn’t hesitate picking up what she’s putting down. “What’s wrong?”

“I, uh, need you to come pick me up. Please.”

“Where? What happened?”

Karen leans against the wall and sighs as a toilet flushes, another woman stepping out of a stall and up to the counter to wash her hands. “Bar on 52nd across from De Witt. And nothing. Yet…. I’m not bothering you at work, am I?”

“Night off.”

“Oh, good,” she breathes out. No waiting for him to wipe off blood or stitch up any wounds, then. The other woman finishes touching up her lipstick and, as soon as she leaves, Karen drops the sweet girlfriend act. “Sorry, I’m in the public restroom, hence the–”

“Pretending I’m someone else.”

“Yeah.”

“Free now?”

“For a minute.”

Stepping up to the mirror herself, she takes stock of her appearance and grimaces, biting back a chuckle. Her hair’s a bit mussed from a long day of running hands through it, her blouse is accidentally more unbuttoned and rumpled than intended, and the slight foundation of make-up she bothered putting on today is all but rubbed off. She’s developed some terrible habits – adding excessive drinking to the pile was, in blurring hindsight, not a great idea.

“Who’s the guy?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember him from anywhere, but I saw him a couple times this morning and now he’s at the bar and tried to buy me a drink and Trish left and I almost fell outta these heels getting in here and–”

“I’m five minutes away.”

“…Thanks.” Karen fumbles with fixing her blouse – there was the problem, she’d buttoned it crookedly one-off in her haste to rush out the door to an impromptu press conference at the courthouse some fourteen hours ago – while balancing the phone precariously between shoulder and cheek. “Ugh, vodka was a bad idea.”

“…How much have you had?”

She groans. Leaning back against the counter, she lifts her hand, squinting at her fingers as she uses them to count. “Two tequila shots outta shit day solidarity. A Screwdriver for the juice. Two– no, three. No, two? Ah, maybe three more shots? And a Black Russian. Or did I get a second? No, yeah, I refilled that one because Trish left after it came. I always wanted to try those– they’re really good. You’d like it.”

“…And the vodka’s the mistake?”

A laugh burst from her, loud and fast, dissolving her into giggles afterwards that she struggles to contain. “I’m normally perfet– per– I’m normally fine with tequila.”

“Hm.”

Karen takes the phone in hand again as her eyelids flutter closed. “What were you doing on your ‘night off’?”

“Nothing important.”

“Maybe I’ll find it important,” she teases.

Knuckles rap against the door twice before it swings open and she blinks at Frank walking in. He flips his burner phone shut, beep sounding in her ear. It takes her several more seconds in comparison to tap the End button on hers before dropping it back in her purse.

“You found me.”

“…Ma'am,” he addresses cautiously, gaze raking over her.

She presses a hand on the counter in an attempt to hide the way she nearly stumbles from turning to face him. “You could'a told me you were outside. I didn’t mean come all the way into the ladies room.”

“It let me scope out the bar,” he answers simply.

Frank closes the distance to put a hand on her elbow, and she marvels for a moment at how steady he is. The alcohol was definitely hitting her faster than she’d thought – realizing that almost makes her laugh again, but her face settles into a lazy smile.

“So, which one is it? Polo shirt nerd in glasses, man-bun nursing a lite beer, or mustache in the corner.”

“Mustache. It’s hard to forget a ‘stache,” Karen says seriously.

His eyes twinkle.

“What?”

“I’ll help you lose your tail and take you home, come on.”

“I gotta warn you, I’m– I’m feeling a little more than tipsy. Right now.”

“I can tell.”

His deadpan delivery leaves her shaking with laughter as they walk out of the restroom, moisture springing to her eyes. She presses a hand to her mouth as her frame continues vibrating, leaning her hips not-too-lightly against the edge of the bartop as they stop there, Frank pulling out his wallet.

The possible stalker a few stools away blanches nearly white, nudging his hat down lower. She notices then that Frank is unusually devoid of his own hat or hoodie or any other obvious disguise accessories. The bruises aren’t so bad, either. Karen grins appreciatively.

“How much does my girl owe?” Frank asks the bartender when the older man steps over.

She blinks at the moniker.

Settling her tab for her before she can think to protest, he swings his arm over her shoulder and lets her use him more easily for support. One of her hands fists in his shirt. Karen loses track of a couple minutes as she squints over at him hard. “What?” He finally asks.

They’re several blocks from the park, and suddenly she can’t remember what direction her apartment is in. “Would you be my boy or my man?”

Frank barks a laugh. “What?”

“For cover appearances. Why is– why is it like that, anyway?” She wonders aloud and to no one in particular, scrutinizing the buildings they pass as if they’ve personally offended her. “'My woman’ sounds weirdly…. I don’t know. It’s weird. But if I’m your girl, then I should say boy, right? But boy is so… young. And weird.”

His hand rubs her shoulder idly. “I said it so that creep would back off.”

“I know,” she replies too quickly. “I’m just… saying…. For future inciden– inci– incidentences– fuck. I’m saying it for the future, okay?”

He nods.

Karen peers over at him, doing her best not to mirror the smirk stretching his lips wide. It was infectious, that smile of his, and he wore it so rarely that every appearance was worthy of a celebration, but she had an inkling that he wasn’t really agreeing with her. “You’re laughing at me.”

“Nope.”

“But you wanna.”

“Hm.”

Gasping loudly, she has Frank turning a startled gaze to her for half a second before relaxing when all she does is poke him. As soon as she does it, though, she stumbles, and lands head-first against his chest. He helps her straighten with both hands on her arms. Annoyed, she juts her chin out. “Don’t make those mocking noises at me, Frank.”

He sighs and tilts his head at her. “I’m not mocking.”

“And don’t conde– don’t talk down to me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, ma'am.”

“You are! Wait–”

While Karen tries to run his words back through her fuzzy brain, the response different than anticipated, he licks his lips. It distracts her instantly. “You’re a funny drunk, ma'am. Anyone ever tell you that?”

She lifts her eyes to find him staring with quirked brows. “…Is that a compliment?”

“Yes.”

“…Where’s your van?”

Frank slings his arm over her shoulders once more and they resume walking. Wrapping an arm around his waist this time to lean on him more solidly, she smells fresh soap lingering on his jacket. It’s a nice and manly scent, something she’s sure is inaccurately associated with a term like evergreen on the bottle. “I was following someone on foot.”

“Hang on, I thought you said you weren’t working.”

“Not working. Looking into someone.”

She scoffs. “That’s working.”

“Didn’t anticipate pulling a trigger tonight. Not working.”

“Your bar is very low,” she comments with a sigh.

Frank looks over. “And why’d Trish leave you?”

“Some emergency. Jessica showed up in a rush and dragged her off who knows where.”

“Jessica the PI, Jessica?” His voice is more than a little curious and, after she nods, it takes her a good minute to remember he knew the connection from her hiring the dark-haired woman not too long ago. One of their joint operations where she convinced him not to kill everyone since she could get quite a lot of evidence on some of them.

She grins, thinking of that tiny achievement.

“What?”

“I have no idea where I’m at,” is all she says. It’s a statement true in more ways than one.

Frank, for his part, is oblivious of that. “Currently, you’re about ten blocks from home. How d'you feel?”

“Free.” She inhales deeply, throwing her other arm out. “So free I’m gonna ignore the trash pile we just passed.”

That draws a chuckle.

When they cross a more populated corner and turn North, Karen spies Josie’s not too far ahead. She points it out. “Let’s stop in for one drink.”

“You’ve gone from tipsy to drunk in the short time since calling me. You’re gonna get wasted. No.”

“I won’t have anything,” she argues. “I want you to try that Russian thing. And this bar’s safe, alright, this is my home turf. I’m friends with Josie!”

“Ma'am–”

“The drink has coffee liquor in it,” she teases, stopping in her tracks and pressing against him as she gives her most pointed look with raised brows and a winning smile.

Frank only flicks his eyes between hers. “…You mean liqueur.”

“Whatever.”

The twinkle in his eyes grows and the corner of his lips wobbles dangerously. “…Fifteen minutes, max. And then I am takin’ you home.”

She points a finger at him again, twirling it a bit. “I know you’re trying to be all threatening with that, Frank, but it’s not working.”

Pulling her closer with the hand resting just below her ribs, he opens the door. “Can’t wait ‘till you’re sober and remember all this.”

“Why? I have nothing to be embars– embarrasst– Christ, you know what I mean.”

He laughs and Karen feels it roll through her side, warm and relaxing before they settle on two empty bar stools as far away as possible from the rowdy crowds by the pool tables and jukebox. “Mhm. I’ll be sure to remind you of that.”

She doesn’t have any good counter response to that, so she simply goes with her instincts and sticks her tongue out.


	33. "So, stay...please."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Anonymous asked: Im terrible at writing but Ive had this exchange between frank going to walk out on Karen to push her away because he realizes they care to much about each other and just as hes about to walk out Karen begs him to stay. “At the diner, you told me to stay away from you and I tried… We tried. But we…we keep coming back to each other. I know I said that you were dead to me but… you’re not okay? You’re not dead to me. You once asked me to stay and now I’m asking the same from you. So, stay…please.” ]

* * *

 

 

When tears track down her face, Frank thinks he might just be drowning on thin air.

She’s crying because of him, and it’s an expression of relief right now, but it bursts forth so easily he fixates on wondering how many times he’s done this to her before without knowing. Times darker and more hopeless in nature. For the moment, he lets Karen cling to him with her arms wrapped in a vise grip around his neck, and follows instinct to hug her right back. His eyes squeeze shut.

How many times had they done this before? A dozen? More?

Memories start to blend and blur into one another as he attempts to find the line they’d crossed into caring, into holding on tight and thinking of the other first. No singular day stands out. It’s been gradual, a steady decline since he’d shown back up in her life needing her help, since they’d met even all the way back in that hospital room with its overwhelming smell of antiseptic, until he’s here, still bloody from only superficially patching his wounds, with his hands on her spine and buried in her hair after another ambush and close-call with death.

He shouldn’t have come here like this – he had a shower to take, new leads to tie down, ammo to restock, and a full run-down to give Micro – but he knew she’d stay up all night worrying. And he’d only wanted to see her.

Karen sighs heavily against the shell of his ear. “You can– you can stay here tonight. If you want. Take a shower, clean yourself up – I restocked the kit, too, so you shouldn’t need anything.”

Briefly tightening his grip, he inhales the scents of vanilla and apple from her hair. He hadn’t actually known what the smells were, at first, much more used to iron and gunpowder, but he’s taken up that offer of using her shower before, seen the green bottles of shampoo and conditioner. Once, he’d hunted them down in a convenience store to replace after using the last when he’d needed to scrub a thick layer of ash off with more than water. She’d smiled so sweetly in surprise.

They should’ve never gotten that comfortable with each other.

He should’ve never let her care this way, let his heart take over so much.

Frank pulls back. With every muscle in his body stiff, he steps away, forcing distance between them. “I can’t. I have to go.”

Blue eyes fluttering with confusion, she wraps her arms around herself in absence of his touch. His fingers twitch. “Yeah, okay. Meet at the water tomorrow? I have something from a story I want to run by–”

“No,” he manages roughly.

Karen’s head tilts, disbelieving small smile playing at the corner of her lips. “What’s wrong, Frank? What’s going on?”

He can’t help it then, closing the distance to cup her face. His thumbs wipe away the evidence of tears. Eyes still red-rimmed, she watches him with a clear gaze now, and he swallows. “I have to go,” he repeats simply before dropping his hands and moving away.

It’s easier to ignore the anvil of guilt and panic crushing against his skull once he’s turned his back to her and gathering his things. “Frank, what are you talking about?” He can feel her watching him. The extra duffel of clothes tucked underneath her couch, the gun cleaning supplies hidden up high in the closet, thick laptop in her desk drawer, toothbrush in the bathroom sink’s cabinet. Christ, it was as if he lived here, as if they were more than…whatever this was.

Friendship, colleagues, kindred spirits. She’d tried to define it one night several weeks ago. They only ended up ordering take-out from her favorite Italian place, drinking enough beers for her to convince him to show her how to clean a gun, what each part was and how seamlessly they snapped into place.

“Frank,” she says, and he hates the alarm he’s put in her voice.

He flips the bathroom lights off quickly but she’s right in front of him blocking his path as soon as he turns around.

“Don’t you dare just walk out without an explanation, without telling me what the hell happened. Not again!”

Clenching his jaw at the reminder of the forest a year ago, her bleeding scalp and cradled arm, he avoids her stare by looking to the floor. “We can’t keep doing this – you can’t.”

“What?”

“It’s too dangerous–”

“I get to make that call for myself–”

“That way, yes, you’ve gotten in the cross-hairs too many times because of me–”

Karen scoffs. “You don’t get to take credit for all of that, and we’ve always made it out, haven’t we?”

“–but that’s not what I mean when I say it’s dangerous,” he finishes quietly. When his eyes lift to hers, he finds her brows furrowed, perplexed as she searches through his torment for answers. “One day, I’m not comin’ back. I’m not walkin’ through that door.”

“Don’t say that.”

“You know it’s true, ma'am, and we’re skirting around it, we’re pretending it’s not gonna happen every time–”

Her head shakes rapidly. “No. No, you don’t get to use this as an excuse–”

Clenching his squirming hands into fists, Frank pushes past and stomps to the door. It was irrational, thinking they could have some sort of fluid split, that he could tell and somehow she’d agree, that she’d already be feeling the same way. They synced in a lot of ways, but never when it came to him acting rashly or isolating himself. Karen only pressed harder.

And maybe a deluded part of him was looking for that because as soon as she yells his name, he stills in front of the door.

Her footsteps are soft across the carpet. “At the diner, you told me to stay away from you, and I tried,” she says slowly. “We tried.”

A shudder rolls through him at the anxiety in her voice.

“But we… we keep coming back to each other. I know I said that you were dead to me, but… you’re not. Okay? You’re not dead to me.”

He should’ve stayed gone.

He’d put that tape with that stupid song in her car so she wouldn’t feel so afraid, but that’d only emboldened her in the forest. He’d looked down at her in the crowd with the skull on his chest only to find her standing, staring back. He’d sought her out on the street, requests for information turning all too easily into confessional once more until he’d slipped in something from one of her articles, until she knew he’d been reading quite a few whenever the time arose.

After that, Frank meant to find another way to get answers, but then she’d said all the right words he can’t remember now, eyes locking onto his unyieldingly, and it’d been too easy to lie to himself. To pretend they could keep talking, keep meeting, keep lingering with arms brushing and smiles exchanged because they were only two people with similar goals.

That’s all it could possibly be.

“You once asked me to stay,” Karen reminds, words strained enough that he doesn’t have to look back to know she’s got tears again. “And now I’m asking the same from you.”

His forehead hits against the door.

“So, stay…. Please.”

“…I can’t,” he chokes.

“Yes, you can. Walking out that door… that’s gonna break me, too. Just as bad as the one day you’re afraid of.”

When her voice cracks, he can’t help how his heart takes over. Frank turns around.

A tear breaks free from the water pooling along the edges of her eyes. “So stay,” she begs.

How many times had he done this to her, he wonders again as his lungs struggle to work properly, painfully constricting in his chest. How many times had she cried because of him. For him. “I’m only gonna leave you broken,” he says, confessing his fear. “Like me.”

Eyebrows lifting, Karen just looks at him with a softening face. “That’s my choice. And isn’t that the risk we take with the people we love?”

He shudders a deep breath. She takes a step forward.

As soon as the duffel bag drops, she jumps into his arms for the second time that night, and Frank doesn’t hesitate to bury his head into the crook of her neck this time. She sobs silently. They weren’t supposed to care this much about each other, shouldn’t have ever cared, period. But it’s too hard for him to recall a time they didn’t, so he sighs ragged. “You’re gonna regret it,” he tries one last time.

Her fingers curl through his hair. “No. I won’t.”

No, he knows she won’t. Because he never had either.


	34. first aid class

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Anonymous asked: I really love your fics! <3 <3 Could you please write something fluffy where Frank finds out Karen's been to a first aid class when he sees the way she takes care of him and helps him patched up his wounds? how would frank feel about this?? ]

* * *

 

 

“It’s nothin’, ma'am.”

“If it’s nothing then you can show me,” Karen retorts without pause, crossing her arms.

He’s already across the apartment, picking a random mug out of her cabinet to partake in the half-empty coffee pot still fresh on the warmer, and weighs his options uselessly for half a minute. The glaring mistake of the evening had been in choosing the fire-escape instead of her door. Littered with scrapes and bruises, Frank hadn’t wanted to chance catching the eye of any of her neighbors as the clock ticked a steady two hours before midnight. Shimmying through her window was always a tight fit for his bulky frame, though, and the tense tugging at split skin along his side made him walk a touch more stiffly than normal afterward.

Of course she’d noticed, calling him out on it without any preamble.

Setting the mug down on the counter after filling it, he resigns himself to the request, recognizing that particular tone in her voice. If he didn’t, she wouldn’t cooperate with the very time-sensitive questions he was here to ask. And Frank had a silent rule against pushing her after the one attempt at a particularly bloodied diner all those months ago.

Not that pushing had worked back then, anyway.

As soon as he lifts up the hem of his shirt to show her he’s bandaged just fine, she’s gasping and peeling back the gauze on his biggest wound. The stitches lie half torn open with a bloom of red seeping through the protective fabric, bright droplets welling along the split. He hadn’t felt more than an annoying sting to warn him. “Jesus, how deep is this?”

“Didn’t hit any organs.”

“That you know of,” she snaps, worrying her lip.

“Just stretched too much. You still got your kit here?” He asks, moving away to open the cabinets underneath her kitchen sink, but Karen shakes her head.

Lifting a hand in the universal sign for ‘wait’, she disappears into the bathroom without a word. The sizable black plastic box she returns with and unsnaps on the counter-top is decidedly not the one he remembers from the last time he’d raided it for adhesive pads. “Take your shirt off.”

When she pulls a pair of gloves on, Frank can only stare inquisitively and silently comply. His eyes track her every moment as she throws the uselessly soaked gauze away, cleans up around the wound, and carefully removes the busted stitches with tweezers. It’s methodical, practiced – a far cry from just a month ago, the last time she’d been this involved in helping him clean up, a late night with a full moon high in the sky and gray light shining through the windows against his back as her hands shook over a shallow three-stitch procedure below the nape of his spine.

“Sorry,” she murmurs inches from his collarbone as she stands in front of him now and presses the cut skin back together as closely as possible after threading a needle.

Her fingers are blissfully cool against his skin. “High pain tolerance, remember? You’re fine, ma'am.”

Hands on the edge of the counter behind, he arches back so she doesn’t crook her neck so severely. Karen steps a foot between his for better balance and lets out a deep breath, muttering low underneath her breath before beginning, piercing back and forth with eerie precision and smooth motions. It’s hypnotic.

“What’d you do?” The question comes out hushed.

“Hm?” Her eyes only flicker up for a breath of a moment but it’s enough for him to see the way her teeth are biting a white line into her lips from focusing so intently.

“The stitching,” he says, and Karen wavers at that before tying off the last one. “What’d you do? Watch some videos, find a doctor friend to demonstrate on a banana?”

“Ha.” Brushing her curtain of hair out of her face, she turns away to re-sterilize the metal tools with wipes. “Why? Are you questioning my skills?”

Frank smirks as he swipes his thumb near the neatly closed laceration. “No, you’re good. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Unwrapping a fresh gauze pad, she steps close once more to apply it, pressing the tape edges softly against him as if she’s afraid to leave her own traumatizing marks. His eyes narrow curiously once more. Not quite satisfied, she smooths the edges a few more times than necessary before pulling her hands back. “Actually, I took a class. One hour three times a week for the past two weeks. Even got a certificate.”

He can only tilt his head and try to capture her stare in order to read her better.

The help a month ago was a fluke, a rarity – he only came by and let her fuss because Micro was completely unavailable and the scene had been messy enough, loud enough, that it caught police attention instantly. Which meant it’d come to her attention. Letting her level terse words at him while patching up a small piece of his broken body eased the worry from her voice, made her calm.

But it wasn’t enough to seek professional guidance over if the occurrence ever repeated. “…Why?”

Her fingers reach out to the purple splotch over his abs, a ghost of a touch as her brow furrows briefly in tell-tale concern, before drifting away without fully making contact. When Karen lifts her head, there’s no missing the steel behind her damp blues. “Because I know you try to stay away when you get hurt like this, but that just scares me more. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, I just keep wondering –'how bad is it this time?’, ‘what if he can’t fix himself up?’, ‘did he even tell Micro?’.”

Blinking away surprise, he ignores the way his throat constricts. “Ma'am, you shouldn’t–”

“Worry?”

Frank nods fast. “Not about me, not like that. I don’t want to do that to you.”

“You say it like you think I have a choice,” she replies wryly with a wisp of a crooked smile. Her eyes drop somewhere around his neck and he ducks his head at the abrupt loss. “Anyway, I’m just saying, you don’t have to stay away anymore. If something goes wrong, I can help. I just… want to know what’s going on.”

She’s nervous.

It’s visible in the way she shuffles the supplies, rearranging the case without clear need to before snapping it shut, jerking on the handle and all but fleeing to the bathroom after a lingering second. Expecting him to say something more, maybe. But he’s paralyzed in place. Torn between giving assurances and giving reasoning, because the assurances that sprang to mind almost instinctively were too soft to pass through lips as bruised and split as his, but all his reasons sounded awfully close to dismissals, feeble excuses to keep her at least a small distance away still, as much as he could manage to maintain after every other choice of theirs kept entwining their lives closer together.

Frank glances down to gauze again, resisting the urge to run his hand over it, before picking up his shirt and tugging it back over his head. Her chipped cup with its paisley pattern sits on the corner of her desk. How many times had he told her to pitch it already?

“It was a gift from a long time ago,” she’d protested, fondness washing briefly across her face. It was hopelessly unfortunate how much he wanted to hear that story. Hear every other story of her life, too.

Picking it up, he dumps the cold contents in the sink before refilling it anew.

She’s washing her hands in the bathroom – except that the soap’s long gone, water running for near two minutes, and her stare’s vacantly fixed on the taps until he’s propping against the door-jam. Karen shuts it off and dries her hands, taking the coffee with a curiously pleased smile.

“Micro’s my first contact every night I work,” he answers quietly. “If I can’t get it all cleaned up myself, if Micro’s not available, I’ll come to you. Just like I did a month ago. I won’t hesitate. And if you need, I can let you know the rest of the time….Send a text or somethin’.”

Tilting her head, she holds his stare for a long moment before sighing, relaxing. “A text would be nice.”

Frank’s lips quirk at the comfortable appreciation radiating off of her. He doesn’t deserve it, but he was as-of-yet unsuccessful at getting her to understand that. And maybe a sliver of himself selfishly yearned for it. “Noted.”

She grins back more completely.

“…So, any chance I get a look at that fancy certificate?”

Rolling her eyes, Karen pushes past him into the hallway. He follows easily. “If you’re gonna make fun of it, no.”

“Nah. Might recommend it to Micro. They clearly know what they’re doin’.”

She laughs.


	35. waterfront tentative hand hold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tumblr ask turned prompt!
> 
> [ aryastarky asked: TENTATIVE HAND HOLD. GIVE ME ONE OF THOSE AT THE WATER SCENE. I can actually see Karen reaching out for him when they argue and he pulls away but if the explosion is after that scene, then he's reaching for her! Excuse me while I go jump off a cliff. ]

* * *

 

 

“These men, they decide what the truth is. There is no other option!”

“You haven’t even tried!” She throws back, desperation cutting through her words mid-sentence with a gasp.

Frank just shakes his head, looking away to the water again, erratic as he runs his tongue over his bottom lip and swallows hard. “You know what this is, you know what they’ve done, what they do–”

“And I know who you are,” she cuts in, stepping forward.

Her head tilts with his as another gust picks up and scatters her hair across her face. Under normal circumstances, in a normal conversation, she’d reach to fix her visage immediately, but Karen keeps her hands stuffed into tight fists inside her coat pockets, every nerve on frayed end with a heart ready to burst from panic as she leans closer, chases his eyes. Chases his soul.

“You hurt bad people, but it’s not like Schoonover,” Karen protests. “You have the full story this time, you know exactly who’s involved and what they’ve done. And Micro’s got all the proof on his computers! Okay, you can tell the world! You can use the justice system not just for you and Maria and Lisa and Frank Jr, but everyone else that they’ve taken. All the people they’ve left behind without answers. You don’t have to do it this way.”

“Maybe I want to!”

Black eyes snapping to hers, she shudders over a breath as cold trickles down her spine from the freezing humidity encircling them. She opens her mouth to protest but he steamrolls her with a furrowed brow and wide gaze.

“In the prison, you talked about me deserving to find out who I am, right? Well this– this is me now. Hm? I don’t care about some bullshit excuse of a ‘revamped’ DA’s office or putting this crap in the paper for people to forget about in a week, alright, I want– I want them scared. I want them beggin’, I want them squirmin’ under my boot like the filth they are, watchin’ me tear out every last one of their throats like they did to my–”

Shaking his head in a constant motion as if he doesn’t even control himself, as if he can’t stop, he lifts a hand to drag over his mouth, ghost of an anxious tick she remembers from when he still had that thick beard. He’d shaved weeks ago but the tick lingers stubbornly. Her eyes flutter with renewed tears. “Frank…. You do this, you’re gonna get yourself killed.”

He huffs a crude laugh. “Not confident in my abilities, ma'am?”

“You know that’s not what I mean,” she says quietly.

Frank’s gaze softens as it rakes over her face, searches everything there that’s unsaid. “…That’s my choice to make.”

“That’s not you.”

Rolling his lips, he swallows again, harsh smile curving the edges of his lips. “You don’t know that.”

Karen shrugs and lifts her hands from her pockets. “Alright, so– so play this out for me, huh? Explain it to me this time: where does it end?”

His stare drops somewhere near her collarbone, drifting past her shoulders.

“See, you can’t. Because you don’t know. This isn’t a plan, Frank, it’s a suicide mission, and as soon as you walk through that last door you’re gonna regret it!”

“How?” Suddenly, his voice cracks, tone dropping low enough to drag over his vocal cords like tires over gravel. “How d'you know I’ll regret it, hm?” Dipping her head, she tries to find his gaze again, but he remains elusive. He avoids her. “…Just– Just walk away, okay, go, pretend none of this ever happened. I’m not draggin’ you into this anymore.”

When he steps to the side and brushes past, she doesn’t think. Her thin fingers reach out and wrap around his palm in a solid grip. Frank still instantly. She doesn’t have to tug for even a moment before he’s turning his head, shifting on his feet, and Karen doesn’t think about it when she slides her grip around all of his fingers properly and squeezes gently, either. He meets her eyes with dampness in his own.

For a moment, she wonders if that’s why he was leaving so abruptly in the first place. Not the argument, not her persistence, not the debates over depression and life and death, but because if he started to cry then maybe he couldn’t stop. If he started to cry then she’d never be the one to leave.

“I know you,” Karen repeats firmly. “And I know that as much as you don’t want to, you care about more than getting revenge on these bastards.”

He scoffs.

“This city. These people – the innocent people that saw what you did before with the gangs as an act of protection, the people that recognize you now and turn a blind eye because of that. You can’t lie to me, Frank. I know…. And what about Micro? You care about him, you care about helping his family. You can’t guarantee they’ll be safe if you run off like Rambo trying to kill them all yourself before they realize what the hell you’re doing. And–”

He’s stopped shaking his head, stopping moving much at all as he watches her, eyes narrowing and widening but unblinking as he takes her in, waits on her next words for something she can’t begin to know, let alone name. Licking her lips, she lifts her eyebrows.

“And, I think, after– after everything. You care about me.”

With a jolt, his thumb swipes over her knuckles.

“And, do or don’t, however much you care, it doesn’t matter. But I know a part of you does, so know that if you– if you do this, if you plan on walking through that last door without ever walking back out, you… you’re hurting me,” she chokes. “Not them, not this mission. You.”

Frank swallows, thumb rubbing softly over her skin, but then a tear drops unbidden down to the edge of her jaw, and something behind his eyes snaps. A light dims. He pulls away.

Hopeless, she lets him with a touch turned limp.

“I have to do this,” he says flatly.

As she watches him disappear slowly into the shadows along the riverside, walking away for the last time, she swipes at the free-flowing tracks on her flushed cheeks and tries not collapse to her knees.


	36. falling asleep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Anonymous asked: Hey, could you do a fic where Frank finds Karen asleep at her laptop or something and so he puts her to bed, thanks c: ]

* * *

 

 

With her chin precariously leaning against the edge of her palm, her other hand’s already fallen to press against the laptop haphazardly. An endless string of G’s roll out on the otherwise blank text document taking up the screen and he doesn’t need to push back her fan of hair to confirm that she’s fast asleep. Micro continues tapping away unperturbed at his desk a couple feet away.

Keeping her newly refilled mug in hand, Frank steps over. “How long’s she been out?”

Micro glances up briefly at the quiet question. “She dropped as soon as you left. It was quite the sight; like she blinked and lost all ability to function. She’s got a hell of a case of insomnia, you notice that?”

He only presses his lips tight.

They’d all been running on empty the past three days, catching at best the occasional cat-nap before Micro sent them digging some place else, Karen’s editor called for a deadline update she was juggling, or Frank settled in to stalk for a few hours on a rooftop. The two of them were used to operating this way, but her? He’d hoped she wouldn’t be so adept at, wouldn’t be wired this way. His gut was right anyway.

Prompted by an overlap between a story of hers in the past and a lead of theirs, tracking a link between a drug smuggler and a new public works’ project, she’d made the connection between their lines of work first and jumped to help. She’d done her duty before, but the bastard still walked after a month’s imprisonment that ultimately resulted in charges dropped.

Like a dog with a bone, her anger remained.

She’d published the story as a human interest piece, and he’d already known that, already remembered reading it, but he didn’t tell her that when she started rattling off the names, ages, and causes of death of the victims she threw out in response to his initial refusal at her participation. Karen knew every one of them without faltering, deep blue in her eyes revealing the heartache she hid so well with a raised chin and firm mouth. She didn’t take no for an answer. And perhaps, at a certain point, he’d stopping trying so hard to make her.

Frank sets her cup down on the edge of Micro’s desk now and sighs, ignoring the other man’s look when he does so.

Softly, he approaches and kneels next to her chair. Her palm loses hold on her chin then, finally, and she jolts, but he catches her fall with a hand on her cheek. He hadn’t meant to – he’d come over to wake her up, offer that cup of coffee she’d wanted again, suggest a break on the couch in the corner. She wasn’t his to look after and they’d both been perfectly clear about that with each other. An attempt at boundaries they both desperately needed to retain to some degree.

And yet.

When she blinks blearily, eyes bloodshot and unfocused as she grasps for the edge of the table, Frank shushes. “Hey. Nothin’s goin’ on, you’re fine.” He brushes her hair behind her ear with a feather-light touch.

After a moment, Karen seems to find his stare and nods. Her eyelids slip closed as she slumps against the back of the chair.

She’ll hurt herself with her head crooked at that odd of an angle, he thinks, and he knows he shouldn’t, knows that Micro’s going to be asking about this later with that same curious tone he always has when he turns the searching questions about the blonde into subtle queries after them, together. But he’ll deal with that later.

Letting go of her cheek, he slides one hand underneath her knees stretched just past the edge of the seat and his other behind her neck. She turns against him all too readily, almost as if she’s meeting him halfway, deep breath escaping parted lips against his chest. Frank stands easily, shifting her in his grip for a moment before heading down the hall.

The couch in the corner was shit, a lumpy monstrosity several years old that was only convenient for its placement among the hideout’s center of activity, and his cot wasn’t all that better, but it was quiet. Dark. Didn’t come with the possibility of her rolling off the edge like the last and only time she’d attempted shut-eye for a meager twenty minutes.

She deserved better than that. Better than marathons of investigating for work, for justice, alone and with them, bent over a laptop or desk with lamps always on in the corner, no matter if she was at her office or apartment or here. The fact that he knows all of that unsettles him, twisting his gut. He’s painfully aware of how warm she feels, how steadily her heartbeat thrums underneath his fingertips near her throat, how softly her expression collapses when she well and truly lets herself succumb to sleep.

Karen mentioned nightmares once, a low confession outside of a coffee shop at midnight, and his mind lingers on that after he sets her down, spending more time than he should making sure she’s got her head fully on the pillow.

It’s ludicrous, thinking about staying by her side, just in case. It’s terrifying how much he wants to anyway.

Frank settles on fetching an unused blanket from the corner and draping it gently over her. Exhaling a sigh again, she curls up, burying her head against the foam as her fingers grasp at stiff cotton. He lingers a minute longer than he should and instead reaches out, lifting a strand of hair out of her eyes once more, watching her lashes flutter.

Faintly, she starts to snore.

He cracks the door behind himself when he leaves.

 

* * *

 

Karen wakes in the midst of darkness.

It’s not unusual – the rare nights for her are the ones where she doesn’t wake until the sun’s peeking through her blinds, city already alive and kicking ahead of her – and for that she groans, disappointment and frustration making her stretch before she cuts her losses and gets up. The concrete wall her foot bangs against is the last thing she expects.

Sitting up quickly, she takes stock of her surroundings. The tilted reality of the past three days floods back. Their warehouse; she was in their warehouse. Her shoulders sag before she squints at the clock on the table next to her, the answer she finds there making her blink several more times. 7AM. She can’t remember the last time she’s slept in that much – though, considering her memories are blurred into nothingness at some point past two, that’s not exactly much of an accomplishment.

Huffing at herself, she drags a hand over her face and glances around again.

She’s only been in the doorway of this room once. Stomping after Frank, she’d chased him to finish an argument he didn’t want to hold in the first place, and she can’t even remember what it was about now as she takes in the bare walls, meticulously organized clothes, stacks of older books here and there that make her pause fondly. There’s a nearly full whiskey bottle in the corner she has no doubt was originally Micro’s.

Though she can’t remember why she was here before, Karen’s quite sure the blanket pooling in her lap is new. A memory of a hand at her cheek comes to mind. She looks to the clock again.

The sound of Micro perpetually hitting computer keys sounds dully outside the cracked door, and she doesn’t know when that became a comfortable sign, but it makes her smile small. The sun was up, but she didn’t have to start the day just yet. Everything was still calm and steady.

Slowly, she lays back down, pulling the sheet up over her shoulders and tucking her head hesitantly into the dip of his pillow. It’s still heated, only a minute passing since she roused. She shouldn’t, and she knows it, but she lets herself drift off again with the fuzzy memory of Frank shushing.

She doesn’t dream for a second.


	37. "the last thing I ever said..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Anonymous asked: I have an angsty prompt idea that I think you would blow out of the water! Could you write something where maybe it's the anniversary of Frank's family's death and he's remembering how he said no to reading his daughter that book the night before and to comfort him Karen admits to him about losing her brother and how it happened right after they had a fight and then cue this quote "the last thing I ever said to him was that I hated him." I just need them comforting/being there each other! ]

* * *

 

 

She can’t get a hold of him for three days, but she doesn’t panic, checking with Micro occasionally instead to ease her mind as he gives her vague updates that yes, he’ll pass on the message to call back because yes, Frank’s alive. It’s the middle of April, and Karen doesn’t need to mark it on a calendar to know what week this is. To know his grief will be more all-consuming than usual.

The anniversary of their deaths.

It’s out of a sympathetic sort of empathy that she takes some sick days and works entirely from home. The last thing she expects though is to get a knock on her door while the sun still sits above the horizon, checking the peephole to find Frank slumped against the wall on the other side, head tilted with eyes discreetly on the empty hallway behind him.

As she opens the door, he ducks his head. “Ma'am.”

A question, a sigh of his name, a reach of a comforting touch. She keeps her response to moving aside and a simple, “There’s a fresh pot.”

No wisp of a smile softens his face, kept more shadowed and hidden away from her than usual as he lumbers past and around the corner to her kitchen. Karen follows and watches with arms crossed so she won’t worry her hands. He’s stiff, movements all too controlled, but there’s a tremor in his wrist that she catches on for a split second when he pulls a mug down from the cabinet.

“…I can’t remember the last time you were here during daylight.”

He makes a sound, part snort and part scoff, entirely too restrained to be anything but forced. “Could say the same thing about you.”

When he turns around, she shrugs. “My current piece on yet another City Hall shake-up isn’t anything people paying attention don’t already know. I could write it in my sleep. And I wanted to be available…in case anything happened.”

Frank keeps his stare on the coffee he’s gulping down as if he’s just returned from being dried out in a desert.

“…Do you want to talk? About… anything?” She offers quietly.

A minute passes, someone slams a door in their own apartment hard enough to carry faintly between the walls, and then he sets the mug aside. He lifts his head to reveal bloodshot eyes.

Her breath catches in her throat.

“I think a part of me thought tellin’ Red way back would’ve helped or somethin’,” he shares, scrunching up his face in wryly bittersweet disbelief. His gaze flickers frequently around between her, the wall, and the floor. An urge to expel some of the tension within more than anything else. “Crazy, huh?”

As soon as he’s trying to dismiss it, his face is falling into grief again anyway. Karen steps closer. “What did you tell him?”

“…Last year, I, uh. I ignored it. Focused on killing a bunch of dog-fighting assholes outta state.”

The period when he’d disappeared completely. She’d worried for so long that he might’ve eventually died, only catching a story here or there across the country of a man with a skull painted across his chest leaving dead criminals and the occasional burning car or breathing innocent in his wake. This one doesn’t sound familiar – she’d know, she checked often around their anniversary then, the first year for him – but she’s not surprised exactly.

Not every place had the level of commonplace vigilantism that this city did and he presented an imposing and terrifying force, even here.

Karen stops hesitantly at his side. He’s shaking his head occasionally now, movement dictated by the rest of his unspoken turmoil, still as a statue next to her.

“Those memories of holding ‘em bleeding out, hearing the shots, I can take it,” he whispers now, voice rough from nearly cracking altogether.

After he squeezes his eyes shut, a tear escapes, and she can feel her own prickling with moisture as understanding dawns. In moments like this, they were all too easily echoes of the other. She places a palm gently on his shoulder and his entire frame jerks slightly from the touch.

He doesn’t move away, though, only rubbing a hand across his face.

“But it’s the others, isn’t it?”

“I told her no,” Frank confesses in despair. The weight over him only seems to compound from the words, and she can feel the tremor of his fingers once more as it rolls up through his arm. “Lisa– the night before, she wanted me to read her favorite book to her. A story for bed, you know; just like old times. It had these bears on it and she’d loved it since she was a baby.”

A flash, and Karen can see the thin book in the girl’s bedroom, set on the edge of a table near markers and pink paper. She remembers flipping open the cover slowly, an innocent tale of sharing and happiness laid out colorfully in front of her. One Batch, Two Batch. She steps over so that she’s in front of him. “I know what you’re thinking, Frank, but don’t do that. Don’t, it’s not true.”

Another tear slips and their eyes lock together. He stares at her with blinding sorrow, brow scrunching up with incredulity at her firm assurance. “I let her down. She sat at home all those months waiting on me, she begged me to do this for her, and I didn’t. I was tired, but I should’ve…. Every time I close my eyes, I remember. I can’t stop it.”

Karen presses her lips together tightly for a fast second to stop the wobbling, lifting both her hands to cup his jaw. Desperate for him to accept her words. “She understood.”

He shakes his head violently, self-deprecating snarl curling his lips. “No. No, she didn’t, ‘cause she shouldn’t have had to. She looked at me– she was so disappointed, but she just put that smile on and nodded at me. ‘Tomorrow night,’ I told her. I broke her heart and left her waiting. Forever.”

“She loved you. She understood.”

Breaths turning harsh and strangled, he puts a hand on one of her wrists to pull her away, but stills as if thinking twice when Karen feels the water at the edge of her eyes give out, tracking rivulets down her cheeks.

“The next day. You remember it, right? You remember most of it?” She presses. “Lisa was happy – you told me that. You all had breakfast like a normal day, and when you went to the park, what’d she do?”

Frank’s stare moves between hers. With a blink, they clear a bit. “…She grabbed my hand. Wanted to ride the carousel, so I took her.”

“You said yes.” His head starts to shake again, protest about the book on the edge of his lips as he opens them with a more steadily deep breath, but she persists. “I know how that feels – saying no, that sadness, it feels like the last thing you had with her, but it’s not. Alright? It’s not. When you’re–” Swallowing hard, her voice wobbles against her will at her own memories cutting away at her already aching heart. “–at the end, no one cares about the little things. All that matters… are the people you love.”

Eyes narrowed and searching, he’s looking at her without any yearning for hope, and she knows that’s why he’s here. Not for her to make it better, not for her to give platitudes or feel-good falsehoods, but for the understanding. Just another soul to listen without pity.

Which only makes her honesty that much harder to swallow.

“They’re gone,” he replies flatly, voice strained enough to make anyone else think he’d been shouting all this time. “I failed them.”

“And I yelled at my brother,” she confides.

His fingers at her wrist tighten.

Biting her lip, her composure starts to crumble. She centers and readies herself by scoffing with closed eyes for a moment. “My parents and I were already not getting along. We fought and I… left. I ran into town, but Kevin followed me because that’s what he always did. He was….”

A fond smile, and then she opens her eyes, finding Frank staring intensely with drying tears. It pushes her on.

“He tried to calm me down, tried to mediate for us, but I got so mad at him. I accused him of taking their side, and–” Rolling her lips, she sucks in a breath. “He stopped. He just…got in the car and told me to come on, and I’d never seen him give up like that. We were as tight as twins and I knew it but I still said all those things, I still hurt him….”

A flicker, and the self-loathing mirroring hers softens touch by touch. Frank couldn’t tell her it was okay, that her brother loved her, that he understood, without validating everything in her words he felt too responsible to accept. He can’t say it, but it’s there as he tugs on both her wrists to bring them down as he folds her hands between his. The tremor of his fingers mellows into thumbs swiping across her skin absently. Soothing.

“I never got the chance to apologize for that,” Karen whispers. Her cheeks twitch. “But I always remember one thing. When we were flipped,” she says slowly, walking through the memory always sitting ready to be fetched at the forefront of her mind, a permanent touchstone, “we got stuck on the seat-belts, and he was…. He was covered in blood. He was so broken…. But he tried to help me. I was a bitch to him, but we tried to save each other, because that crap never matters at the end.”

It’d taken her years to accept that, to cling to it and stop hating herself for that one small component of the entire mess at least. At the steel of conviction in her tone, the skepticism lining his face continues to clear, compassion washing over until it’s all that’s left. He nods once. “…Maybe it doesn’t. But it’s somethin’ we have to carry.”

She considers that as the tears in his eyes renew. “Yeah,” she resigns quietly, unable to deny the truth she knows just as intimately. “We do.”

Her hands had folded into tense fists within his hold without her realizing, nails biting into palms reflexively to keep sobs at bay, and she relaxes them now with a deep breath. At the motion, he lets go.

Karen wraps her arms around his neck and sets her chin on his shoulder. “The last thing I ever said to him…was that I hated him,” she admits aloud for the first time since the fiery words had exploded from her on that cloudy day in Fagan Corners.

Gradually, the last of the tension releases from his shoulders before his hands press solidly against her back and nape, pulling her closer. His temple leans against hers when he turns his head ever slightly. “I remember lookin’ at Maria, right before it happened. Junior wanted somethin’ and I volunteered to go. Said I’d be right back…. Just didn’t run fast enough.”

His jacket’s got a wet spot on it, but she’s sure he won’t mind, phantom of an impact on her shirt wondering if he’s not dropping his own tears, too. “Something we have to carry,” she says, repeating his words back to him gently. Frank sighs.

For normal people, such a thing shouldn’t be so reassuring, but he slumps back against the counter to use its support. She goes with him. They stay just like this through the sun setting and the coffee pot’s warmer clicking off, until their eyes are dry and the prospect of standing upright doesn’t feel so hard. They both hold on tight until they’re sure the other isn’t going to break.


	38. yelling!Micro and protective!Frank

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Anonymous asked: Can you do a prompt where Micro yells at Karen and Frank gets the in his face. I literally be for protective!Frank

* * *

 

 

 

Micro’s jumping up from behind the hub of computers as soon as they walk in. “What the hell was that?!”

“I’m sorry,” Karen says with a sigh not for the first time in the past hour.

As soon as they were in the clear, she’d apologized to Frank, rambling out in harsh breaths as the adrenaline and panic left her shaking with rolling tremors. He’d only shushed her, eyeing the bruises on her arms and shallow split near her temple. Guilt sat heavy as a stone in her chest.

With long strides, he’s across the room and rummaging through a box on one of the shelving units before she comprehends what he’s meaning to do. He should take care of that dangerous slice across his side first but she’s long learned he’s too stubborn to do more than insist on cleaning her up until she gives in, and she’s too tired to argue when he’s clear-eyed still, so she simply waits, folding her arms together. “Guy didn’t know shit,” he tells Micro bluntly.

The other man tugs on the scarf around his neck. Anxious, it was either that or to start pacing – she was getting good at reading his ticks by now, and spying this one has her steeling herself with lips pressed tight. “How sure are you? He could’ve been lying, trying to throw you off or trying to prey on her empathy as soon as he saw her.”

“Then he was an idiot.” Their small and incredibly basic first aid pouch in hand for minor occasions such as this, Frank returns to her side and wraps a light hand around her elbow, steering her to stand at another desk nearby.

She lets him while looking at Micro. “We did get one name that might lead somewhere. Whitman. I think the first name was Carl? It was hard to tell with all the–” Karen almost comments on the way the blood had gargled up from his lungs and out of his mouth before the scene flashes full-force through her mind’s eye again, makes her a bit queasy. She shakes her head slightly to dispel it. “Look, I’m sorry, Micro, but–”

“Next time you want to jump in, do us a favor and don’t.”

“Hey,” Frank cautions none too lightly.

Something on the screens pings shrill and loud, startling her with another bout of dizzying worry, but Micro’s unfazed as he taps on the keyboard a few times before it disappears. The brief resurgence of adrenaline has her hardly noticing the sting of alcohol as Frank swabs at her head wound.

Micro runs a hand through his hair, annoyance melting back into a scowl of barely restrained anger. “Fine – just do me a favor and don’t. I’m the one that has to save your asses with the cameras and alarm systems and police calls, remember? My job gets ten times harder when I have to retroactively cover up your tracks too without any heads-up!”

“I thought I could reach him in time to warn you guys–”

“If you were smart, you would’ve come here first–”

The words hit her like a slap and Karen stiffens defensively. “That’s not fair, I was closer to Frank!”

“And the more you show up next to him, the more likely it is someone’s gonna notice that his one-man army’s got friends. A weakness to exploit! Look at you two; ten minutes together when he was almost done with a simple job and somehow you’re both bleeding!”

Her mouth’s open to retort, but as soon as she blinks, Frank’s across the couple feet of distance and slamming Micro against the metal divider at his back. Devoid of glass panes, it only rattles harshly. “Shut the hell up,” he growls.

Karen steps forward. “Frank–”

“Easy infiltration and interrogation, five guys sleeping, stealth on your side,” Micro says readily with an even tone as the two men stare at each other. “How’d you get cut up enough to bleed through your shirt, huh?”

“Shit happens.”

At the reminder, she swallows and shifts on her feet. Micro catches it with a glance. “Does it?”

Frank’s fists at the collar of his sweater tightens. “She’s in this just as much as us so drop the bitching. You wanna say somethin’, you say it to me, ‘cause you yell at her one more time, I swear to God–”

“You’re gonna hit me? Rough me up?”

“No!” Karen interjects, taking another step closer. “That’s ridiculous. Frank–”

“Don’t test me,” he threatens, letting the words sink in for a tense moment before letting go of Micro. He turns his back, moving away to fetch the sewing kit off another shelf and heading to the bathroom to patch himself up. Karen glances between the two of them hopelessly, suddenly and awkwardly very aware of a tension she hadn’t known existed.

Her gaze settles on Micro as he fixes the scarf around his neck once more, jaw clenching. “I am sorry, about ruining the plan.”

“I know,” he says, and when he looks at her again, the anger drains away. All that’s left is anxious consideration. “But you know I’m right, too.”

With a frown, Karen nods. That was what made it all that much worse, kept her torn between going after Frank, lingering here, or leaving altogether. Taking a breather to attempt lessening the guilt now growing and heating up a flush through her veins.

She’d tried to intercept, to help, but she’d botched their ability to cover-up what was now a mess of a scene. She’d put her identity in danger, might’ve hurt their chances at dissecting more helpful information. More importantly, she’d distracted Frank for half a second, more than enough time for one of the bastards to lunge and almost stab him straight on. It wasn’t life-threatening, it wasn’t the worst he’d ever had – not by a long shot – but it was still a hit.

It was still her fault.

Micro sighs. “Sorry about…all that. I wasn’t mad with you, it’s. Everything.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “This was just the tipping point in the middle of an unfortunate and very sleep-deprived week. For me.”

“No, it’s okay,” she dismisses with a stiff shrug and deep breath of her own. “I deserved it anyway.”

“No, you didn’t.”

When she glances back over from where her eyes had drifted to the hallway, Micro’s staring at her with a kind of tired wisdom that makes her feel terribly young. They didn’t have that much of an age gap, she knew, but for a flicker of a moment it reminds her of when Ben, worn out from caring too much, would advise her to be careful.

“You’re not just his weakness – he’s yours, too. I know what that feels like,” he admits. “Makes it hard to stay in control….”

She should deny that. The opening was there, the need – because acknowledging that only made it more glaringly obvious how much they were lying to each other about letting go once she finished helping and was satisfied with finding the truth, once he got all his answers and vengeance and didn’t have anyone hunting for what was left of Frank Castle – but she’s stuck with the words at the back of her throat.

There’s an understanding in Micro’s eyes and, slowly, she relaxes at the silent question of it. Karen nods once.

He doesn’t say anything else, just steps away and sinks into his desk chair once more to run another recognition check through a series of street cameras. She’s grateful. The last of the tension in the room releases, giving no hint about the burgeoning fight of five minutes ago, and she lifts a hand to feel along the wound at her temple already forming a scab. The lesser of two injuries.

Slipping her hands back into her coat, she heads down the hallway to find Frank.


	39. construction worker!Frank (set pictures prompt)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Anonymous asked: If she's anything like all of us fans, she'll be blushing and tongue tied... But could you write something about Karen coming across Frank in his construction worker look? That'd be great! Thank you! ]

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When Karen texts him, he only responds with the address of a food-cart in the middle of downtown and, for a split second, she wonders if it’s a trap, if it’s even him. They have their secluded spots precisely to avoid any prying eyes. Even if no one around them knows what they’re looking at, it’s safer this way.

But he wouldn’t get taken down that easily.

The last she knew, Frank was keeping a reconnaissance low-profile somehow related to the background check information tucked away in her purse, and there was no reason for anyone to be looking for him in the city yet. Or looking for him anywhere near her.

After a beat, she sighs at her phone and grabs her coat.

It’s two stops on the subway and a handful of blocks away. Paranoia ghosts against the nape of her neck same as every other time they’ve met, but she was used to it long before him, ignoring it once again and pushing everything else out of her thoughts except the mindless and yet very long to-do list bouncing around her head.

At least her feet weren’t aching like usual. The more settled she felt in this job, the less she adored her favorite heels, ditching them for the convenience of flats instead. Every facet of her life kept yearning for change and she was powerless to do more than follow along with it.

When the green light flashes, Karen hurries over the crosswalk. She stops off to the side as soon as she sees the food-cart and her lips quirk. A colorful mess of a collage across the sides advertises coffee and soda, bagels and sandwiches. There’s a line of half a dozen waiting, all either on their phones, checking watches, or brandishing sleepless dark circles as an older woman bustles behind the aluminum counter-top.

The soul of the city in one glimpse, she thinks wryly.

“You’re short,” Frank says simply from behind her.

She startles.

Covering it up smoothly as she turns to locate him, she watches him straighten from the makeshift alcove at the corner of a gray brick building only a couple yards down the sidewalk. She’d walked right past him. He was exceptionally good at blending in, better than anyone she knew still breathing, but she’d chide herself anyway for not noticing him if her brain wasn’t in the midst of short-circuiting, eyes sweeping over him in a double-take.

She swallows and tilts her head at the words she just barely manages to process when he stops a foot away from her. “What?”

“Your shoes,” he explains with an emphasizing glance, and it’s then that she realizes her eye-line is, for once, a subtle inch below his.

Karen mimics the glance by looking at his own shoes – same black boots as always, of course – before getting caught in another slow slide up the length of him, consciously cataloging everything this time with a twinge of disbelief. Dirt- and dust-stained pants, blotched yellow construction hat in hand, dark flannel open and rolled to his elbows with protective glasses tugging a side of his tank-top dangerously low over his chest. Every inch of skin she catches sight of seems to harbor a thin sheen of sweat.

They didn’t look at each other this way, never had and never should, but she feels a light flush of attraction blossom underneath her cheeks. Harsh and hot, it’s impossible to brush away.

She clears her throat and ducks her head, fishing the few pages of copies out of her purse. When she passes them over, her head’s cleared just enough to keep her voice moderately even. Frank doesn’t show any indication of her other interest as his focus narrows. He takes the papers with a gentle grasp. “So what’s this all about? Trading drywall repair for favors from someone else?”

A quick smirk and he glances up before flipping between the pages. “Somethin’ like that.”

She shifts on her feet, crossing her arms.

He doesn’t glance up again before he relents, knowing what she wants to ask but doesn’t. “Borrowing a guy’s resume to get close to this one,” he gestures with the papers. “All this work and won’t get to cash the checks, it’s a damn shame. Guy gets good pay.”

“You ever do this before?” Karen wonders aloud. “Not the– the identity theft, I mean the construction work.”

Folding up the pages, he tucks them in his back pocket and fixes his shirt to cover them, shrugging. She tries not to look at how tightly the tank-top hugs at his abs but she fails. Part of it’s almost see-through, wet underneath from sweat still, and it sets off a troubling flutter within her stomach. “Once or twice, as a kid. Fast learner.”

“Hm.”

She doesn’t realize she’s thrown her stare to the sidewalk until he’s leaning in and ducking his head. “Hey. What is it?”

The heat underneath her skin deepens, a healthy part of it shame as she over-compensates by throwing her head back and swallowing, stuffing her hands in her pockets. Her palms sting from digging fingernails. “Nothing! Nothing, I’m. Tired.”

Frank’s gaze rakes over her. She knows it’s not remotely close to being the same as how she’d just checked him out, that it won’t ever be, and for that her heart shudders. Feeling disappointment was almost worse than feeling the desire at all.

“So, is he, um. Is he one of your targets?” She asks quickly. This is what she had to think about – reality. And the reality was that she’s already given him information on far more people no longer breathing than she’d like to be comfortable with.

He shakes his head, lifting his brows with a look of something like compassion. “No. Just someone that knows more than he thinks.”

A nod, and a relieved smile she doesn’t have any instinct to hide flashes across her face. “Okay. I’m glad to hear it.”

Frank lingers in the stare for a moment before blinking away. He gestures to the food-stand. “Pay you back with a coffee?”

There’s that look again she’s come to know so intimately in the last month, guilt and appreciation swirling behind brown eyes, and she’s startled for the second time in as many minutes by the blush renewing itself underneath her cheeks. No, she wasn’t supposed to find that attractive at all. Physicality, alright, it’d been a while since she’d really looked at a man, but this was different.

This was perilously serious, a tight-rope she’d be walking all by herself with her own heart on the line.

But how was she supposed to turn away from the only person that put all the fears about herself at ease? That’s what this is, Karen decides. A crush because of too much familiarity. It was just a crush that had her glancing down at his chest one more time when he readjusted where the glasses sat. It was just a crush that made her throat dry, that’s all.

She could get over a stupid crush.

“Ma'am?”

She smiles. It’s a bit strained at the edges, and he might just notices by the way his eyes flicker, but if he does then he doesn’t say anything. “Yeah, that sounds good. Thanks.”

When Frank runs his hand through his hair absently with an answering ghost of a smile on his face, she pretends not to notice the way his shirt opens again. It really is just obscene. She should tell him that once they’re alone again, tell him he’s gonna catch more attention than he thinks because of it.

Her words come out scratchy when she orders a coffee with creamer at the now empty window and the older woman makes her repeat it. Despite the autumnal chill, her body heats feverish from another flush of shame, and his eyes flicker her way again, searching for signs of something more he’s missed.

Karen decides to keep her observations to herself.


	40. kastle kid's park birthday party

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Anonymous asked: When you have the time could you write a fic where Karen has a kid (you can choose whether boy/girl) but no one knows who the father is. But one day while they're at the park maybe for the kid's birthday so that everyone is there, he/she spots Frank (undercover, but the kid would be able to tell) and yells daddy as he/she runs to him unknowingly revealing the secret. How everyone reacts is up to you! I just can't get the adorable image of Kastle's kid running happily to their dad. Just so cute! ]

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It’s an innocent Tuesday afternoon when Frank tugs his hoodie over a ball-cap and subtly searches the sprawling greenery of Central Park.

Karen had only shared a general idea of where they’d be – because he hadn’t asked, hadn’t ever wanted to know before any time in the past solely to keep them safe, exactly why he shouldn’t be here now – but this spot of nature in a sea of concrete is uncharacteristically more empty than usual, making his quest all too easy. There’s a handful of people reading on benches and spread-out blankets, some teenagers playing an informal game of soccer, the occasional jogger or passerby on the phone.

He follows squeals of laughter and chatter to a clearing with picnic tables.

Four. His little girl was turning four, and Karen was already talking pre-K schools, buying more and more advanced play practice books because their girl was smart just like her mom, she was excited about going new places and making new friends, so much more relaxed and ready than either of them were that it only left him dizzy, stabbing ache in his chest flaring up again.

She was growing up so incredibly fast. He was missing so much.

There’s just Karen, Nelson, and Claire standing at two of the tables, organizing food and presents and a cake overflowing with blue buttercream flowers he already knew about because he’d seen it the night before, been the one to finish it off by adding a small heart in the corner. A promise, just between the two of them.

It was the only constant Frank could give her but his girl loved it anyway.

“Annabel!” Karen calls, and she turns away from the other couple of kids, dark blonde hair whipping around her face. He leans against a tree in the shadows and watches her bounce wobbly on her feet as Karen asks her about something.

Flashes burst behind his eyelids, harsh and disorienting. Maria, smiling at the kids with that same kind of tender love. Lisa and Frank Jr. running, playing, laughing. It wasn’t the same spot within the vast park, tucked away far North of the carousel, but no matter how much he reminds himself of that, running a hand down over his face, panic takes hold of every fiber in his being. It squeezes through his veins, bursts a clammy sweat across his skin.

He should’ve told her no.

Karen had asked, she knew him so damn well that she’d asked. “It won’t…bother you, right?” Those bright blues, filled with concern, she would’ve cancelled it in a heartbeat if he’d just said so. Years and years and an accidental pregnancy and the fresh pain of the loss would never fade, they both knew that.

But he’d nodded – because Annabel, innocent and unknowing, had set her mind.

Nails scraping through his hair this time, Frank manages a longer if still uneven breath, swallowing hard. His heart beats a mile a minute as he scans and re-scans the perimeter. He couldn’t leave them up to chance. He had to be sure, he had to be here, and no one had to knock him upside the head for him to know it was pure paranoia that drove him here, he knew, but there was too much risk in the alternative. He’d truly go mad this time if he wasn’t here, just in case.

Just in case.

“Daddy!”

His eyes snap to Annabel in alarm, feet already moving before the swimming fog of his head clears and it clicks. No bullets, no screams, no danger. She was running at him full-speed with arms out-stretched, wide-eyed and grinning.

She thought he was surprising her. She was happy.

Glancing over to the picnic tables, there’s a couple other people now, recognition vaguely tickling at the back of his brain, but he can’t bother with that right now. He’s already stepped out into the sunlight all by himself. Karen catches his gaze, confusion melting away into something light and warm. Something like hope.

Guilt twists like a knife through his stomach at that – he was giving her a false impression with this, he was crashing down her life in one mistake of a moment – but then Annabel jumps at him and all thought flies out of his head as he catches her, tinkling laugh sounding against his ear as a sore rib pings.

“You’re here! Mommy said we’re gonna do candles soon.”

“That so?” He manages when she leans back too look at him, oblivious to his scratchy voice.

She reaches out, clumsily tracing one of her hands over his bruised left eye with a prideful smile. “It’s smaller! I told you. Kissing it does make it better, Mommy’s right.”

A soft smile tugs at his lips. “Yeah, little heart. Think you got some magic there.”

Another giggling, and she wraps her arms around him again. Frank tightens his grip around her tiny frame and holds onto the moment with eyes slipped closed. Pretends, as long as he can, that everything’s just fine. Nothing else matters, won’t ever encroach on this.

But then she’s squirming down and he helps her, pushes away the fantasies and tries to be subtle about his scanning of the perimeter as Annabel grabs one of his hands and pulls him over. “Mommy!”

“I saw,” Karen says as soon as they’re close enough. “Hey, why don’t you go put the candles in? Uncle Foggy’s gonna help you, aren’t you, Foggy?”

Nelson picks his jaw up off the floor with great difficulty and stumbles through a nod as Annabel is immediately distracted by the prospect and grabs hold of his hand, instead, rushing to the tables. Claire just lifts her hands. “Don’t gotta say it – but I do expect a full rundown later. We all do.”

“Seriously seconded!” Trish calls over.

Frank’s already got his hands shoved in his pockets and stepping several yards away. Karen catches up to him with crossed arms and a lip worried between teeth. It’s just as easy for him to read her after all this time, after all the shit they’ve dealt with, and he accepts the want in her tense shoulders by sighing and meeting her eyes. At that, she gives into the urge and cups a hand around his jaw.

“You okay?”

“…No,” he answers honestly.

She huffs. “Good. You feel like you’re sick but I was afraid you might lie.”

“You know I don’t.”

“Yeah. I know we don’t.” Her skin’s cool against his with all the calming power of an ice-pack against a swollen stitch.

It’d been four years and some change in months since they’d talked about stopping this, too, though they’d never been able to define it. Her tears dropped on his shoulder after a rough day, another loss, another troubling anniversary. His twitching hands held in her steady grasp when it all become too overwhelming, too haunting, when the nightmares of memories vividly consumed.

A kiss and a hold, solace and then something more.

They’d talked about stopping it, and he shouldn’t let her caress him like this now, shouldn’t mirror her blatant care with his own as he brushes a stray strand of hair behind her ear, but they’d failed at this almost as soon as they’d decided it. She never looked at anyone else. He never ventured far again.

Annabel never got exposed to anything but love.

“…We’ll cut the cake and go. Okay?”

Glancing around, he finds nothing but a peaceful park, paranoia ebbing away a few drops at a time. “Annabel really outed us back there, huh?”

“I think Trish and Claire had their suspicions,” she shrugs. “Foggy might have a stroke, though. I’m kind of worried about him, I haven’t seen him that pale since he survived an explosion with a shard of glass in his side.”

“Nelson?”

“Yeah.”

“Hm,” he grunts, an inch more of newfound respect there for the admittedly halfway decent lawyer. “How you wanna explain this?”

Karen rolls her lips. “…Well. Annabel’s here, so they’re not going to pry too bad….”

Stare narrowing, a twitch of a smirk manages to curl his lips, despite everything else sickening and bloody roiling within him. “You wanna pretend like it’s nothin’, ma'am?”

“Yes, sir, I do,” she quips. “We can put it off for today at least. This should be all about Annabel, not us.”

A nod, and her touch lingers with soothing swipes of her thumb over his cheekbone for a minute before the birthday girl bounces over. Karen disentangles with a fond smile.

Frank ignores everyone else the rest of the hour, lifting his girl at his hip when she blows out her candles, indulging her every whim. A spot of icing on her nose from him and the ensuing laughing fit pulls the rare chuckle out of his lungs. He’s aware of how many eyes are on him, but they’ll deal with that shit later, his only shifting between his girls and the darkness around them, ever vigilant.

Just in case.


End file.
